


Dreams of Leaves and Sand

by PastaAfterDark



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bodyswap, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-05-23 14:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastaAfterDark/pseuds/PastaAfterDark
Summary: When he opens his eyes, Gaara worries for a small moment about what destruction he’s caused this time before he realizes that he’s still asleep. Dreaming.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who came here from [Raising Naruto](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12330894/chapters/28038405), this is going to be a little different, but I hope you like it all the same. For everyone else, thank you so much for reading! <3

When he opens his eyes, Gaara worries for a small moment about what destruction he’s caused this time before he realizes that he’s still asleep. Dreaming. He’s in an apartment, small and cluttered with empty ramen cups and open milk cartons. The window’s open and the air coming in from outside feels fresh and cool. There’s nothing like this in Suna, he thinks, and he’s never had a dream this nice, this bright, this vivid before. He takes a deep breath of the air, feeling the strangeness of moisture, humidity. He wonders briefly how his mind could even conjure up an image, but then he’s distracted by the quiet.

It’s too quiet, he realizes. Even in dreams, he can hear Mother whispering to him, her anger never far from the surface of his thoughts. Mother’s voice is gone entirely here. He presses at the thought, like a bruise, wondering if it will hurt, but it doesn’t. He frowns to himself. He feels… something, but it’s buried down deep, in some dark place that he’s never visited before. It feels cavernous, damp, he thinks he might hear water sloshing, before he pushes that thought away and slides out of bed, wanting to enjoy this dream before it fades or changes as it inevitably will.

He tries to summon the sand, and for a moment, fear grips him when he cannot. Even though he’s in this strange climate, he should be able to feel it around him, hidden in the dirt, in the building materials, in _something_ , but he doesn’t. He looks down at the floor and realizes his feet are not his own feet at all.

In fact, his skin itself isn’t the same. He raises an arm up to look at it, turning his hands over.  It’s a golden color, much like sand itself, and completely unlike his usual skin tone. This isn’t his body, he thinks, feeling the strange proportions. He’s taller now, somehow, perhaps totally different all around. He pushes the panic back, reminding himself that he’s dreaming. He’s only dreaming...

When he finds a mirror, Gaara sees messy blonde hair and wide blue eyes staring back at him in shock. There are small scars on his face that resemble whiskers. He touches them hesitantly. He’s never had a dream this real before, or perhaps he’s never remembered it. Every detail is so clear, he can feel the skin of this different face beneath his fingertips. He steps back from the mirror, wondering what else there is to see. 

This apartment is quite small and cluttered, as he noticed on first waking up. He finds that he’s hungry, but he ignores that. From the looks of the place, he’d be hesitant to eat anything here. He needs to go outside. The world beyond the window looks like nothing he’s ever seen before. It’s a lively-looking village, full of people, and in this strange new body, he can explore without - well - regardless, he just wants to see before it all slips away. He finds clothes in the closet, although not many to select from, mostly oversized t-shirts, which seem unusual considering his size. He slips on the least obnoxious-looking of the options, and finds his way out into the world. 

Everything’s so green. Tall trees tower over him, waving branches with leaves rustling in the wind. There are small birds on the branches, calling out to each other. He even thinks he sees a small fluffy rodent-like creature scurry up the tree. He’s never been out of Suna before, and he’s definitely never seen anything like this. People’s clothes are different, here, too, not having to worry about the sand or the relentless sun. He finds himself feeling like he’s been transported to a different world entirely as he walks around the village.

When the initial wonder wears off, he notices something odd. It’s the way people look at him. He thinks this body appears fairly young still, just as he usually is. He thinks there’s no reason for random villagers to look at him the way that they do. It’s not quite the same way that they look at him in Suna, but it’s something similar that sets his teeth on edge. How could they know? Can they sense the darkness within him? He waits for the anger to come, for the sand to start swirling around him, but it doesn’t, and somehow he feels relief at that. He never meant to hurt anyone, especially at first. Not until… But no, he won’t think of that now, in this dreamlike place. He looks down at these new hands. There is something stirring deep inside him, but it’s buried. He places a hand on his stomach, wondering at that feeling, but shrugs it off. At least he still has this quiet in the dream, this control. Even if the villagers still look at him… it will have to be enough.

Gaara continues his wanderings around the village. It’s nothing like his own village. He slows when he sees a group of others around his own age outside of a building. He wonders, briefly, if he could join them, say hello. He wonders if that’s allowed in this dream. He looks down at his hands again, wondering if he might accidentally hurt someone. So far the dream has been fairly normal.

When he looks up, there’s a shinobi glaring at him. 

“Naruto!” the other man yells, and he's so close to Gaara’s face all of a sudden that Gaara feels helplessly surprised. Usually the sand armor would protect him, would lash out if something got too close. This body feels so vulnerable and unprotected that he flinches at the older ninja’s closeness. The man continues, “WHY are you showing up late again this morning? You better not be up to pranks again!”

Gaara blinks blankly at this curious stranger. _Late?_ Gaara’s expression alone is usually enough to ward people away, but the man seems totally unimpressed. In fact, he grabs Gaara by the collar and starts dragging him towards the building. Gaara’s never been dragged _anywhere_ before, and the experience is surreal. The others are all now staring at him. Some of them giggle, and he hears the pink-haired one say with disgust in her voice, “Naruto’s in trouble again.”

If only he had his sand! He’d - well, he considers this as he’s deposited in the middle of the group of kids who are looking at him curiously but not with fear as they do in his village. He realizes that he’s still not all that angry actually. In fact, he doesn’t feel much of anything other than an undercurrent of curiosity towards the students and the older ninja who looked to be a chuunin instructor. 

Both the students and instructor seem to be waiting for something, but he’s not sure what. The instructor called him Naruto - apparently the name of this body. He's starting to feel unsure if he's really dreaming at all, or if perhaps he's under genjutsu. It’s getting weirder and weirder the longer it’s lasting, but not in an unpleasant way.

Most of the kids scatter, somehow unsatisfied with the results of the confrontation. The chuunin instructor also walks off muttering under his breath, and Gaara merely watches him leave. _Academy_ , he thinks – so this is what ninja Academy is like. He's never been allowed to go. Private tutors can hardly stand to be in the same room as him - let alone trusting him in a room full of the village’s future, untrained shinobi. He's an unsheathed weapon, barely contained at the best of times. He stares down at the unfamiliar hands and wonders if this is what the dream is about. Something he's not sure he remembers ever longing for, but now that he has the opportunity, he's feeling something unfamiliar wash over him. Some sort of electric thrill of excitement he analyzes. 

“What are you doing?” someone asks, and Gaara lifts his head to find a kid with a spiky ponytail raising an eyebrow at him.

When Gaara doesn't reply, the other boy starts looking vaguely concerned. “Did you hit your head or something?” he continues, giving Gaara a curious look. A few other kids are also still looking at him oddly, as if they’re expecting a reaction from Gaara that he’s not providing.

Gaara shakes his head slowly, cautiously. “Not that I can recall.” The kid frowns in response, looking at him as if he’s a puzzle to be solved.

Gaara has so many questions he wants to ask. What's the name of this village? Where are they in relation to Suna? Does Suna even exist? Maybe the most important of all - is this really a dream? Because it’s feeling less and less like a dream as the moments pass, but Gaara can’t figure out any other explanation for it. He’s not sure if he should voice these concerns. What if this isn’t a dream, and he’s trapped in an enemy’s genjutsu? Another assassination attempt from Father, perhaps? A test of some sort. There are still too many variables. He ends up saying nothing further, which seems to be yet again the wrong response. The kid gives him a sharp look. “C’mon Naruto, are you okay? You’re acting weird today.”

Gaara shrugs, and then looks up at the blue sky and the trees, something warm and unusual stirring in his blood, something that feels like contentment. “I feel good,” he says, honestly. He’s  startled at the idea as soon as the words leave his mouth. Without the dark whispering, without the simmering anger beneath the surface of his thoughts, he does feel surprisingly good. He looks around at the other students and notices the pink-haired girl is giving him weird looks too, but he doesn’t mind. They don’t look at him the same way the adult villagers do or the villagers in Suna do, so he doesn’t mind at all.

The other boy finally shrugs and looks away, as the rest of the group heads inside the building. Gaara follows behind. He might as well. If this is a dream, it’s possibly the most bizarre dream he’s ever had, and that’s saying something.

\---

The chuunin instructor - Iruka, he’s gathered after listing to some of the scattered conversations - tells them to take their seats, which poses a new challenge: he’s not sure where to sit. He hangs back, waiting for everyone to go to their spots, and then notices that there’s still one left open next to the pink-haired girl. Process of elimination...

When he sits down, she sniffs and tosses her hair at him, but he ignores it. He’s never been in a room with so many others his own age before, and he finds the experience fascinating. Many of the other kids are still only half-awake or drawing on their scrolls. There’s a boy eating chips and sitting next to the spiky-ponytail kid from earlier. He has a few empty wrappers stuffed in the bag next to his chair, and the ponytail kid has his head on his crossed arms. The most unusual thing about this situation is that the chuunin instructor keeps giving Gaara odd glances, as if he’s expecting him to do something out of the ordinary, but Gaara’s not sure what to make of that. He supposes he’s probably acting unusual since he’s not sure what his usual behavior should be like.

The lesson is on the history of Konoha, which is apparently the name of the village he’s in. Gaara’s heard of Konoha - it’s in the land of Fire. He doesn’t know much about it beyond that. He thinks Suna’s relationship with Konoha is tense, but he couldn’t say why. As a weapon, he’s not expected to know much about politics apparently. 

Most of the other students seem bored by the lesson. The instructor calls out to a few of them to answer questions, which helps Gaara learn some names - Shikamaru from earlier and Chouji with the chips. Hinata, who blushes and stammers when called on, and Kiba, who seems to be as sleepy as the small white dog hiding in his jacket. The instructor doesn’t seem to bother to call on Gaara, and he’s starting to wonder what kind of reputation Naruto has. 

Regardless, he’s drawn in by the lecture, utterly fascinated by the depth of history in this village. Gaara realizes that he doesn’t even know this much about Suna, really. By the time they break for lunch, he’s still wanting to hear more. He frowns as the other students all stand up, pulling out bentos, but he realizes that he brought nothing and hasn’t eaten all day.

Shikamaru appears next to his spot, and elbows him. “Yo, Naruto, let’s head outside,” he says, and Gaara’s too taken aback at the physical contact to reply. Shikamaru frowns slightly. “What, no bento again today?” 

Gaara finds himself nodding at that, and a very unfamiliar look crosses Shikamaru’s face. Some emotion Gaara’s sure he’s never seen directed at himself before. He wonders at it, but Shikamaru shrugs, “You’re welcome to have some of mine again.”

“Won’t you be hungry then?” Gaara asks, honestly curious. He’s not sure of the customs here, but usually bentos are prepared as single lunches.

Shikamaru gives him another odd look. “Of course not, my mom always packs an extra bento for Chouji anyways.”

Gaara nods in reply, unable to give any other sort of response to the offer, and follows Shikamaru out to what appears to be the customary lunch area. They sit under a tree while Shikamaru and Chouji talk about nothing in particular. Gaara can feel Shikamaru’s eyes darting over to analyze him further every once in a while, but Gaara can’t bring himself to mind too much. He lets their conversation lull him into a relaxed state until it’s time for them to go back inside for class.

\---

In the afternoon, they have sparring practice. Gaara feels momentarily worried, sees the scared faces of villagers in his mind and expects to hear the dark commands of Mother, but nothing happens. He doesn’t have the sand, he realizes again, and it’s just as surprising as it was earlier in the day. He cautiously tests his chakra levels, finding them much larger than expected, but other than that, this body holds few surprises. And it’s only a sparring match. He feels something like excitement yet again when realizes that he doesn’t have to worry about hurting anyone. The excitement concerns him on some base level, as if he should be wary of it, as if the act of feeling such an emotion will cause something terrible to happen, but... isn’t this only a dream after all?

The instructor calls out, “Naruto and Sasuke, you’re up.”

The pink-haired girl (Haruno Sakura, he’s discovered after her own match with another blonde girl named Ino) giggles, and Gaara wonders what she finds so funny about the match-up. Sasuke gives him a dismissive look, but gets into the position to spar anyways. Gaara will have to stick to basic moves. He doesn’t have the sand to protect him after all.

Sasuke’s fast and comes at him like he has a grudge, but Gaara’s survived several assassination attempts by now, and he’s not about to let an Academy student from another village best him. The instructor ends up calling it as a draw, giving them both surprised looks when he breaks them apart. 

Sasuke nods at him, giving him a more calculating glance this time, and his other classmates are staring at him extremely oddly now, whispering to each other, but he’s not sure why. The kid with the puppy - Kiba - is the first to congratulate him. “Way to go, man,” Kiba says, slapping him on the back. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Gaara’s shocked momentarily by both the physical contact and the affection in the gesture. Although it sounds like Gaara wasn’t expected to do very well in the match, Kiba seems pleased that he didn’t lose. He wonders at this sort of relationship. Something like friendship? Although the adult villagers seem to look at Naruto with similar eyes as his villagers do, some of the students are open to closer bonds. Gaara says nothing in reply to Kiba, unsure of how one would respond in this situation. Kiba looks puzzled but shrugs. The puppy on his head barks happily.

Gaara could really get used to this, he thinks, and he finds himself, not for the first time, wishing that the dream would never end. He’s starting to think this isn’t a dream at all, and there’s something within him that’s deeply glad for that. Without Mother’s voice in his head, he feels a freedom unlike anything he’s ever know before. And anyways, the school day is nearly over, but there’s so many things left to explore. An entire village, in fact. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to yell at me in the comments if you either recognize the fusion or can't live without knowing the fusion elements... :3 Maybe I'll tag it later. 
> 
> This is very much a work-in-progress. I have an outline, though, and hope to be posting monthly for now. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto bolts upright, feeling a wave of fury wash over him. His heart’s thudding in his chest, and there’s this murmuring in the back of his thoughts - a sinister whispering. He presses his face with his hands, eyes still closed, and pushes against his forehead, thinking he needs to wake up a bit, but the noise doesn’t stop. He feels hatred creeping into his thoughts. Malice. He tries to think of what could’ve caused this, but yesterday seemed fairly normal. Sure, one of the vendors in the market yelled at him again, and someone spit on him as he was walking to Academy, but he’s had worse days. Usually he feels alone and sad, but never like this.

He opens his eyes finally and realizes that he’s still dreaming.

It must be a dream, at least, because the room he’s in is nothing like a room in Konoha could ever be like. The walls are rounded and appear to be made of something other than wood - rock? Sand, maybe? The windows are round, too, and the air in the room feels dry and gritty. Everything smells wrong. The voice is still in the back of his thoughts, like an undercurrent, but he does his best to push it aside, hoping it will go away soon, or that he’ll wake up. He feels somewhat comforted knowing that it’s just a dream. Dream logic never makes much sense anyways.

The next thing he notices is how much smaller he is than usual. Okay, it’s not by much, but he’s _definitely_ shorter. He looks at his arms and notices his skin is paler, too, and he’s wearing some sort of light material for clothes. He frowns, looking around the room for a mirror. 

When he sees the shock of red hair, the kanji for _love_ scarred into his forehead, the dark rings around his eyes, he yells aloud in shock, scrambling backwards from the mirror.

 _Just a dream, just a dream_ , he tries to remind himself, but panic crawls up his spine, and the murmuring in the back of his mind grows louder, almost as if it’s trying to drown out his own thoughts. 

There’s a sharp knock on the door. “Gaara, are you alright?” a voice asks hesitantly. It’s a girl’s voice, an unfamiliar one he’s never heard before. And… _Gaara?_

“Uh,” he replies, and the door opens slowly, revealing a taller girl with spiky blond pigtails. She’s carrying what appears to be a large, closed fan on her back, and she’s frowning in concern but looks reluctant to approach him. Her eyes remind her of the looks of the villagers, but different somehow. 

“I think I’m dreaming,” Naruto says, and she tilts her head at him. 

“Dreaming?” She asks, again, still overly cautious.

He nods, gesturing around him, “Where are we?”

Her eyes widen, worried suddenly, and she takes a step forward before holding herself back again. “Gaara… are you not feeling well?”

He shakes his head, getting annoyed all of a sudden, “Well, no, there’s this weird noise in my head, but hey! My name isn’t Gaara. I’m Uzumaki Naruto, don’t you know? I’m going to be the Hokage one day!”

She stares at him, opening her mouth and then closing it. “The… the Hokage?” She asks, “Like… Konoha’s Hokage?”

Naruto nods enthusiastically, thinking they might be getting somewhere after all. “Yeah! So you’ve heard of it! Where are we anyways? And do you have any food?”

Naruto thinks she’s looking even paler than he is, but she nods and holds her hands up in a placating gesture. “Um, yeah, just… Wait here a minute will you?”

Naruto frowns, “Hey, where are you going? I’m really hungry…” And he is, in fact. It feels like he hasn’t eaten in a very long time.

If anything her eyes widen even further at that, but she closes the door quickly, leaving him in the room by himself. He shrugs and decides to follow her out anyways. The door isn’t even locked.

He cautiously peeks his head out into the hallway, but there’s no one else there. The older girl must’ve body-flickered away, he reasons, and feels jealous that he’s not very good at ninja techniques yet. He does try… well, sometimes… but it seems like his chakra just won’t work the way he wants it to, and everyone always ends up yelling at him anyways. He’s never any good at the things they have him do during Academy lessons, and sometimes it’s just easier to cause trouble because then at least he knows what he’s getting yelled at for.

The angry voice in his head seems to perk up at that thought and doubles in volume. He grips his forehead, feeling something crawling along his body. It feels like small insects running along his skin, and it’s giving him the creeps. What a weird dream.

He tells the voice to cut it out, and tries to think about happier things, like Ichiraku Ramen. The voice seems to fade into the background at that, and his stomach growls prompting him to continue his original mission - food! There’s got to be something around here somewhere, even if it’s just a dream. Maybe if he thinks hard enough about food, it will appear!

He looks down the hallway again, only to find several ninja in an unfamiliar uniform staring at him in a cross between shock and terror. The symbol on their headbands is the one for Suna. He realizes suddenly that the girl was wearing one, too. Why is he dreaming about ninjas from Suna? 

“Gaara-sama,” one of them says, backing away even further. “Do you need assistance?”

Naruto eyes the other man for a moment. It’s pretty weird that this guy is referring to him as Gaara-sama, of all things, like he’s some sort of royalty. But beyond that, it’s also strange that the guy’s offering to help but looks like he’s about to run away.

Naruto shrugs and replies as cheerfully as he can manage, “Can you show me where I can get some food?”

The ninjas whisper among themselves briefly, and then another one of them says cautiously, “Um, we can have something sent to your rooms, if you’ll just remain there.”

Naruto frowns, getting fed up at this whole thing again, “Why’s everyone trying to keep me in that room? What kind of dream is this anyways?”

The ninjas are talking frantically amongst themselves again, but Naruto just ignores it and decides to head down the other hallway. One of them half-heartedly asks him to stop, but no one’s following him so he might as well explore. Who knows when he’ll wake up, after all, and this is some of the most fun he’s had in a long time.

\---

“Should we tell father?” the girl hisses to the boy she’s brought along with her. Naruto had finally found the kitchens when she caught up to him again. He seems to be in some sort of palace, he thinks. And it must be in Suna. All of the ninjas he’s run into are wearing Suna headbands - the boy and girl in front of him included, although the girl wears hers around her neck and the boy is wearing his on a hood. The boy’s older than Naruto, but seems to be younger than the girl, since he keeps calling her “older sister.” He’s also wearing purple face paint that reminds him a little of Kiba’s mom, but in a less vicious way.

The kitchen staff seem to all be terrified of Naruto, and they all cleared out as soon as he opened the door. He heard them whispering to the older girl when she arrived. Their reactions are not too far off from his usual day to day life in Konoha, but it still stings. Although in Konoha people usually chase him away instead of running in the opposite direction. The voice that’s been lingering in the back of his thoughts perks up at that, but Naruto shushes it. He’s trying to focus on his food and ignore the two arguing siblings simultaneously.

“Are you crazy?” the boy replies, but he’s still talking to the girl, and then he gives Naruto a skeptical look. “Father would just send more assassins after him.”

“Why does your old man want to kill me?” Naruto asks around a mouthful of rice, finally too interested to ignore them any longer. He’s not too worried, though, since it is a dream after all. He doesn’t think dream assassins could do much harm.

The girl looks at him like he’s grown a second head, and then makes an all-encompassing gesture, the large fan on her back bobbing with the motion.

“Do you see what I mean?” she asks the boy, and the boy frowns at Naruto.

“He says he’s from Konoha. Konoha, of all places!” she says, as if this is something terrible.

“Hey! Konoha’s a great place!” Naruto says, and then asks the boy, “What’s your name anyways?” 

“Kankurou,” Kankurou replies immediately, and shrugs at the girl. “I don’t know, sis. He really doesn’t seem like Gaara at all, does he?”

She shakes her head, and both of the siblings just stare at him.

“Well what’s her name then?” Naruto asks Kankurou, because he’s a little annoyed at the girl. Probably because of the assassin thing. Even if it _is_ a dream.

“Temari,” she all but growls, before Kankurou can reply, and she frowns at him skeptically. “You really aren’t Gaara, are you?”

“No!” Naruto shouts, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.” He stands up, leaving his bowl on the table, and finds it odd when both siblings automatically take a step back. He frowns at them.

“What’s the deal anyways?” Naruto asks. “Why are you all so afraid of me? Of Gaara?”

Kankurou and Temari give each other looks, and Temari shakes her head.

“No way, kid,” she says, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you don’t know that, then we’re not about to tell you.”

Naruto feels that anger rising up in him, the whispering increasing, and it’s hard to shake away this time.

“The people in my village treat me the same way,” he says flatly, and the voice in his head grows louder. He feels a sort of coldness wash over him, and it scares him. He thinks the voice is saying that he should kill everyone. It’s really not a nice voice at all, and it gives him the creeps.

Temari and Kankurou back up even further, starting to look truly frightened for the first time. Naruto looks up at them.

“Why do you treat Gaara like this?” he says, and Kankurou points at something over Naruto’s shoulder.

“The sand,” Kankurou says simply, but Naruto doesn’t understand what he means. He turns his head to where Kankurou’s pointing and shrieks, jumping away from the floating sand. The sand moves with him as if it’s connected to him by thousands of invisible threads.

“Gaara, calm down,” Temari snaps, but her voice is frightened.

“I’m not Gaara!” Naruto says again, “And what the hell kind of dream is this anyways?”

“You keep saying that,” Termari says. “That it’s a dream. What did you say your name was?”

“Uzumaki Naruto! You better believe it!” Naruto says, automatically, and Kankurou shakes his head.

“Nope, definitely not Gaara,” Kankurou says. 

“That’s not helping,” Temari replies under her breath, and Kankurou rolls his eyes at her. 

“Okay, Naruto then,” Temari says. “Whoever you are, you’ve got to calm down.”

“I’m trying to,” Naruto replies, frowning. “But it’s really hard. There’s this voice…”

Temari’s eyes widen, “You can hear him?”

“Hear who?” Naruto asks, and Temari gives Kankurou another look. Kankurou shrugs at her. Naruto doesn’t think they’re going to tell him who or _what_ it is that he can hear in the back of mind. The voice chimes in to let him know that it wants blood, and Naruto _really_ doesn’t think he should listen to it. Naruto tries to think about ramen again and about the trees in Konoha and about becoming the Hokage, but it’s tough to push the voice away this time.

“Does Gaara hear this all the time?” Naruto asks finally, but neither of the siblings reply. “No wonder everyone’s so scared of him,” he mutters. “He must be nuts.” 

“Gaara’s a little… intense,” Kankurou supplies helpfully, and Naruto thinks it’s stupid to be talking about all of this anyways, as if any of this is real. He’s probably going to wake up any minute and be back in Konoha. That thought relieves him somewhat and the voice fades. He shrugs.

“Whatever, can I have more food?” he asks, resolved to do his best to ignore the feelings swirling around. _None of this is real_ , he tells himself, trying to remain calm. _The voice, the sand, none of it._

Kankurou nods. “Have at it,” he says, and waves a hand at him. “I’ve got puppets to work on.” And... _puppets?_

Temari scowls at Kankurou’s back as he leaves but gives Naruto a curious look when he sits back down at the table. Naruto finishes the whole bowl of food and then grabs another while Temari watches him in silence as if she’s never seen another person eat before. Naruto’s had a lot of strange dreams, but this one really tops them all. 

\---

Naruto wakes up the next morning, realizing that he’s late for class. He rubs his eyes, feeling too tired even though he knows he got to bed at an okay time last night. He had the strangest dreams though, of Suna and the sand, and the people there with even more hateful eyes than in his own, and a small part of him is glad to be waking up in Konoha. He rolls out of bed and shuffles to the kitchen area. He pauses. The kitchen is clean. 

He frowns, tilting his head a bit and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Well, it’s not clean exactly, but he’s pretty sure there were more empty ramen cups and a milk carton or two last night when he went to bed. He shrugs, but he doesn’t really have time to worry about it. He wonders if the Old Man stopped by when he was sleeping, but he doesn’t think the Old Man’s ever done anything like that. And usually he leaves some money, anyways, if he stops by. And anyways, Naruto doesn’t really have anything to eat other than ramen, and there’s no way he can make ramen and still make it to Academy on time. So he gives up on wondering about the kitchen and makes his way to the closet. He throws on some clothes and runs out the door, waking up a little bit more as he goes.

It’s a bright and sunny day in Konoha, and he revels in the fresh air after the sand and heat from his dreams. The dream felt so real, but it seems like it’s slipping away the more he wakes up with the greenery of Konoha all around him. He remembers that people called him by a different name in the dream, but now he’s having trouble remembering whose name it was. And anyways, everyone still looked at him as if he wasn’t worth looking at, so it wasn’t really much better than real life. Different place, same story. This morning, he ignores the glances and stares he gets in the village as he races past, and he resists the temptation to grab something from one of the food carts in the market. Half the time they refuse him service anyways, and lately Shikamaru’s been sharing his bento with him at lunch. Shikamaru’s a pretty good guy.

Naruto usually doesn’t care so much about classes, but they’re all getting ready to graduate Academy and to become real ninjas. Naruto just wants to get through this week and the next one and take the exam so he can start training _for real_. He speeds up a bit as he thinks about it. He’s going to show the whole village and become Hokage one day, you better believe it!

When he gets to the Academy building, though, it’s suspiciously quiet for this time of day. He notices Shikamaru and Chouji lazing about under a tree in the courtyard and makes a beeline towards them instead of heading into the classroom.

“What’re you guys doing here?” He asks, tilting his head at them. “Are you cutting class?”

Shikamaru’s attention trails away from its place in the clouds and onto Naruto. Chouji ignores him in favor of continuing to read a manga.

“It’s Saturday, Naruto,” Shikamaru says plainly, but that can’t be right, because tomorrow’s Saturday, and today’s supposed to be the day when they have sparring practice, and he’s going to finally show Sasuke up. Well, maybe. Sasuke seems to always get the best of him somehow. Shikamaru’s eyes sharpen a bit, and he sits up when Naruto doesn’t reply.

“Are you _sure_ you didn’t hit your head or something?” Shikamaru asks, and he sounds like he’s already asked Naruto this question a few times, but Naruto is pretty sure he would remember something like that happening.

“I didn’t!” Naruto replies, shaking his head. “But wait, it’s seriously Saturday? So I missed sparring practice?”

Chouji finally looks up at that, and now he’s giving Naruto an odd look too.

“You were _at_ sparring practice yesterday,” Chouji clarifies helpfully, but Naruto doesn’t remember that _at all_. 

Naruto plops down into the grass next to them, ignoring their stares to think _really hard_ about what happened yesterday, but he’s positive they didn’t have a sparring match. Yesterday was totally boring, and if they weren’t graduating soon, Naruto would’ve ditched. He didn’t do anything interesting at all yesterday, except for have that really weird dream. He shakes his head.

“I really don’t remember,” he says, and Shikamaru gives Chouji a concerned look.

“Man, you were acting really strange all day,” Shikamaru says, and Chouji nods, grabbing a handful of chips.

“You nearly won the fight with Sasuke, though,” Chouji adds.

“I did!” Naruto nearly shouts, and Shikamaru rolls his eyes at him.

“It was a draw,” Shikamaru says, and Naruto bounces onto his feet again.

“I gotta go find Sakura!” Naruto says, and Shikamaru shakes his head, sighing.

“She wasn’t that impressed,” Shikamaru says, and Naruto deflates again. 

“Man,” he sighs. “I missed all of the good stuff.”

Shikamaru gives Naruto an odd look again, before saying, “But you didn’t. You were _there_.”

And Naruto just shrugs and then lets himself fall back against the grass. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I don’t remember any of it.”

They sit in silence after that. Chouji’s back to reading his manga, and Shikamaru’s probably thinking about something or the other. Naruto’s really upset that he missed the sparring match, but part of him wonders if Chouji and Shikamaru are just teasing him. He doesn’t think Shikamaru would be the kind of guy to do that, but he really doesn’t remember sparring with Sasuke at all. After a while, Naruto nearly tells them both about the dream he had, wondering if maybe that has something to do with it, but when he goes to say something, he realizes he doesn’t remember much of it at all anymore either. Just a hazy memory of sand and heat and _rage_. He doesn’t think it was a very good dream anyways. At least not good enough to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bunch of Real Life nonsense converging all at the same time, so the next chapter will be up on August 22. (Perhaps a little earlier if I can!) Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Gaara’s eyes slide open to the familiar sight of the ceiling in his personal rooms at the Kazekage’s residence in Suna. He feels more refreshed than he has in years, and it seems initially like he has a firmer grip on reality than usual. That is, until the whispering returns. 

On days when his mind is especially clear, like today, he knows that it’s the tanuki demon inside of him that whispers to him. But more often lately and the longer he stays awake, the lines start to blur, and his mind slips into something nearly unrecognizable. Once that happens, it’s all he can do to prevent himself from following “Mother’s” orders.

Disappointment washes over him, feeding the demon’s ranting, and memories of Konoha slide out of his mind like sand. _It was merely a dream after all_ , he thinks. But of course it was. Another trick, or perhaps he’s losing his tenuous hold on reality for good this time.

He sits up quickly, the sand rising to his defense, when he hears the knock on the door. He’s more relieved than he’d like to admit seeing the sand providing it’s ultimate defense like usual.

“Gaara?” Temari’s voice asks, and usually she waits for a reply, but today she slowly opens the door, poking her head in. She watches him with a question in her gaze, and he’s not sure what she’s waiting for. 

When he doesn’t say anything, she asks, “Who are you today?” and it’s almost a whisper. Almost too low for him to have really heard it. Surely that’s not what she said. Is she talking about the demon? He shakes his head at her, not following.

She sighs, and it sounds like relief in her voice, “Wait here.” 

Gaara does, because the request is too odd to ignore. He remains in bed, trying to remember his dream. He remembers a messy apartment. Villagers that looked at him with eyes not unlike Suna’s villagers. Sunlight, but not the harsh, unforgiving sunlight of the desert. Most of all, though, he remembers the trees.

Temari returns quickly with Kankurou at her side. Gaara notes how odd it is to have them both here in his rooms. He can’t remember the last time...

“Well you seem like you’re back to normal,” she says once the door is firmly shut behind her, and Kankurou nods in agreement.

“Good to see you, bro,” he says, and Gaara stares at them both. Why are they here? His interactions with them are distant at best, and at his worst… Well, frequent threats to kill them both if they don’t stay out of his way is mild to say the least. And even if it’s more of a warning than a threat, the hurt in their eyes when he says it is better than the consequences of them not heeding the warning.

Gaara pauses, unsure how to proceed. “Was I injured?” he asks finally, but the underlying questions are much darker. _Who did I hurt this time? Why do you care?_

“That’s what we’d like to know!” Temari says, exasperated, and for a moment, Gaara’s too lost in his own thoughts to understand what she means. “Yesterday you were claiming to be someone named Naruto.”

Kankurou nods seriously, “You told us that you wanted to be the Hokage.”

Gaara blinks, and silence blankets them. He tugs at the memories of his dream, but they are growing murkier every minute that passes.

“You don’t remember?” Kankurou presses, and Gaara pauses, thinking, trying to sift through the pieces of the dream again as they slip out of his grasp.

“Naruto…” he says, and the name is familiar on his tongue. “Yes,” he says. “I do think I was called that in the dream.”

“Dream?” Temari asks, eyes wide.

“There were leaves,” he says, because that’s the strongest memory he has. “And… an Academy.”

He looks down at his hands, where the sand armor lays pressed against his body like a second skin. “And I couldn’t use the sand.”

But the longer he sits here, the more the dream fades, and he shakes his head. “It’s hard to remember now. They called me Naruto, though.”

Temari’s lips press together in a frown. Her expression is unusual, at least when directed at Gaara. _Concern_ , Gaara thinks. _Worry?_

A feeling bubbles up in his chest, and the whispering grows quieter at the feeling. He remembers feeling differently there, too - in the dream.

“Did you dream of Konoha?” Kankurou asks, and Gaara nods once after thinking for a long moment.

“I think I did,” he says, and Kankurou shakes his head at him again.

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Kankurou says, but Gaara’s not sure how that could be true. The voice whispers doubt. _It’s a trick of some sort._

“Do you remember what you did yesterday?” Temari asks, and Gaara frowns at this.

He spends most of his time wandering the desert, training with the sand. It’s easier than avoiding people in the city or the Kazekage’s residence. The days blend together without much meaning. A haze. Sometimes he sees private tutors, but he’s not sure when he last saw one. He thinks the last one was too terrified to come back, perhaps. Gaara wasn’t feeling his best when he saw that one, he thinks grimly. He shakes his head.

“Not really,” he says. “I was probably training in the desert,” he guesses, but that answer doesn’t feel quite right. He _remembers_ … but then it slips away. The more he presses at it, the louder the whispering grows. He resists the urge to grip his forehead with his hands. He knows his siblings will leave if he does that, if they know that he can hear it right now.

“No you definitely weren’t,” Kankurou says, and Gaara’s eyes meet his. Kankurou’s gaze slips away at the last second though. He shrugs as if to cover up his discomfort. “You were here all day. Terrorizing the staff.”

“Terrorizing…” Gaara trails off, taken aback by Kankurou’s casual tone, Temari’s obvious concern. Usually his siblings are carefully distant, and he rarely speaks to them. This is the longest conversation he’s had with them in as long as he can remember.

He pauses carefully, considering the weight of the realization, and tries to remember what he did yesterday, but finally shakes his head again. Everything’s a blur now, and he’s feeling frustrated the longer he speaks to them. 

“I don’t recall such a thing,” he says abruptly. “I’m sure I would remember staying in the building.” 

Temari frowns again, puzzled, and her expression reminds him of someone, but Gaara’s not sure who, because he doesn’t interact with very many people. _Mother_ doesn’t like it.

Temari glances over to Kankurou, and her eyes communicate something to him that Gaara’s not privy to. Mother’s voice grows in the back of his mind and he feels the sand crawling along his skin. Some small part of him tries to tell him that it’s the demon doing the talking, but he feels himself slipping already. 

“You should go,” he says quietly, but it comes out more like a growl, and Temari jumps a bit, as if she’s been caught. Gaara’s tired of thinking about the dream. Whatever it was, he doubts it will happen again. Kankurou makes a move, like he wants to pat Gaara on the shoulder, say some meaningless platitude, but his hand pauses mid air and then drops to his side. He frowns as well.

“Alright, Gaara,” Kankurou says, finally. “Let us know if you need anything.”

Gaara doesn’t nod, doesn’t reply, just clenches his fists into the blanket, staring down at the bed. It’s a small relief when they finally leave. Times like this, all he can do is force himself to get up and to head into the desert to train. Relentlessly. He is a weapon, after all. He might as well remain a sharp one.

The demon taunts him with images of what he might do if Gaara lets himself fall asleep again. How stupid, Gaara thinks, that he slipped up like this. He doesn’t know what the dream was about, but it was childish of him to believe in such a thing. The demon seems to snort with agreement at that.  


_But Temari and Kankurou knew about it, too…_  some small part of him tries to reply.

Gaara slips out of his rooms and into the desert before he can take that line of thought too much further. No one dares to follow him. He knows his body won’t be able to handle staying awake indefinitely, and he knows that the longer he stays awake, the more fully he slides into the madness. But, he trains because it’s all he knows, and it’s all he can do to keep himself awake.

Until he can’t anymore. 

\---

He wakes up to a hand pushing at his shoulder. His reflexes feel sluggish, too slow, but the sand should’ve protected him nonetheless. No matter how exhausted he is, the sand always defends him.

“Temari?” he asks, but when he lifts his head off of where it’s laying on his too tanned arms, he sees Shikamaru. _Oh_ , he thinks, and then he _remembers_.

Shikamaru’s eyes widen as Gaara stares back at him in confusion, holding the eye contact for far too long to be reasonable, but Gaara’s mind is racing now. He’s back in Konoha again. In the dream, or not-dream, perhaps. Shikamaru sighs as if he’s already tired of it all.

“You’re not actually Naruto right now, are you?” Shikamaru asks him, and Gaara’s still frozen, still unable to answer. He’s not sure what the right answer is or how he could possibly explain the situation. 

First, and most suspiciously - the voice is really gone here, in this place. The demon’s not inside of him. Although there’s a sense that maybe there _is_ something in this body, too, but that’s a thought for another time.

Also, Gaara remembers everything that happened the last time he woke up here. But why couldn’t he remember before? 

_This can’t be a dream_ , he thinks, but then what is it? He’s not sure what to say to Shikamaru, if anything. It appears that it’s the middle of the day, and Naruto’s been napping in class. Perhaps this is why the chuunin instructor stared at Gaara in shock when he was actually paying attention to the lessons. 

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the other day,” Shikamaru continues finally, when Gaara doesn’t answer. “And it definitely was not Naruto who took Sasuke on in that sparring match.”

Gaara had wondered about that, too, he remembers now. The surprised, but pleased reactions of Shikamaru and the other kid - Kiba. Gaara still has no idea what Naruto’s personality is supposed to be like, other than Temari and Kankurou’s brief allusions to their interactions with him. But it seems that Naruto is not good at sparring, at the very least.

 _We’re switching places_ , Gaara thinks, finally, resolutely, and it’s so obvious to him. He’s sitting in a ninja Academy talking to another Academy student. He could’ve never imagined this scenario on his own. Not even in his most hopeful moments would he have imagined this.

And of course they are really switching. Temari and Kankurou _met_ Naruto. It’s the simplest explanation, but when he was back in Suna he just couldn’t remember...

Shikamaru’s still staring at him, and the classroom’s totally empty now, so Gaara shakes his head slowly.

“No,” he admits, voice too loud in the quiet room. “It wasn’t.” 

Shikamaru nods at this, as if confirming a simple fact, as if the pieces fit together neatly. He looks a little relieved. 

“But usually Naruto _is_ here,” Shikamaru says and gives him a level glance. 

Gaara nods at this, too, although if he’s honest, he has no idea how much time has passed - how many hours or possibly days he’s spent training in the desert before he fell asleep again.

“Earlier this morning, Naruto was _Naruto_ , and he has been Naruto for a few days,” Shikamaru tries to clarify, but shakes his head, as if brushing off the line of thought. 

“Ah, it’s too confusing to talk about,” he says, leaning back against the desk area behind him. “So who are you, anyways?”

Above anything else, Gaara’s not so sure he should answer that _at all_. Shikamaru’s gaze turns sharp at Gaara’s silence, though, suspicious.

“Well, you know - it would be useful to call you something different when you’re not actually Naruto,” Shikamaru says not so subtly, and… he has a point. It’s confusing enough to think about as it is. Gaara inclines his head in agreement, a concession. Perhaps a name wouldn’t hurt.

“I’m Gaara,” he says simply.

“Gaara,” Shikamaru repeats. “And you’re not from Konoha, are you?” he asks.

Gaara shakes his head but doesn’t provide any further information. He’s not sure if an Academy student in Konoha would know who he is, but just in case… He’s not sure how well his presence would be received here.

Shikamaru sighs, sticking his free hand in his pocket and looking up at the ceiling. The other hand holds the top of a bento bag. “Man, you’re not going to make this easy on me are you?”

Gaara feels a strange urge, as if he wants to laugh, but he watches Shikamaru instead. Waiting for his decision.

Shikamaru shrugs, and Gaara relaxes. 

“I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Shikamaru says, and Gaara bows as much as he’s able from his seated position.

“Thank you,” he says, and Shikamaru nods again.

“Come on, let’s go to lunch,” Shikamaru holds up the bento bag in his hand. “If you’re not going to tell me anything about yourself, at least tell me what Naruto’s been getting up to.”

Gaara grimaces at that, and Shikamaru laughs out loud, but leads him out into the courtyard anyways. Shikamaru doesn’t actually ask about anything else, even regarding Naruto, and Gaara’s thankful for it. He eats the extra bento as Shikamaru and Chouji talk and Chouji occasionally gives Gaara odd glances. Gaara wonders if Chouji will figure it out as well. 

Whatever he’s doing, he’s apparently not doing it like Naruto does, but Gaara gives up on worrying about that and tries to enjoy the rest of the school day.

\---

“How do you switch places?” Shikamaru asks, sometime later, after classes are over. They’re walking together to a training ground, or so Shikamaru had told Chouji before they left the Academy. Chouji waved off, completely uninterested in extracurricular training, and Shikamaru rolled his eyes at him when he left.

“As if I am either,” Shikamaru had muttered.

Gaara’s felt exhausted all day, and he’s not sure if it’s Naruto’s body or if it’s leftover from his own training. Having made it through the entire school day, he’s still not even sure what day it is, really. He has no sense for how long he stayed awake before passing out from exhaustion. He finds himself feeling a little guilty that Naruto would be waking up in that state, somewhere in the deserts of Suna.

“I don’t know,” Gaara says honestly, answering Shikamaru’s original question, and Shikamaru nods, falling into thought again.

“Naruto’s switching too, right?” Shikamaru asks then, and Gaara doesn’t see what it would hurt to confirm this, so he confirms it.

“He is,” Gaara says. “My brother and sister met him.” 

“He didn’t seem to remember anything,” Shikamaru says, deep in thought, and that sparks Gaara’s interest.

“I couldn’t either,” he admits. “I was convinced it was all a dream.” _Or a trap._ But the last part is best left unsaid. 

“You could leave a note for him,” Shikamaru suggests, but Gaara’s not sure what he would write in it. _Stop terrorizing the staff?_ He finds himself nearly smiling at the thought - Kankurou’s words. Perhaps smiling comes easier to this body.

Shikamaru shakes his head. “Man, it’s really weird seeing Naruto all quiet and thoughtful like this. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Gaara’s shrugs, “I have no idea how to be Naruto. I just don’t want to attract a lot of attention.”

“Well that’s where you’re getting it all wrong,” Shikamaru replies, and then kicks at a stone on the ground. It rolls into the clearing ahead of them. 

“Welcome to Academy exam training,” he says out of the blue, and Gaara looks at him like he’s the one switching bodies with someone from another Hidden Village.

Shikamaru stretches his arm behind his head in an embarrassed gesture.

“Come on, man. Maybe it’s a little weird, but I need to teach you Leaf ninja techniques before the exam.”

Gaara stares at him blankly, and Shikamaru laughs.

“Why do I need to learn Leaf techniques?” Gaara asks finally, taking the bait.

“For the exam,” Shikamaru repeats. “ _Naruto_ has his Genin exam in a week, and _you_ are going to learn Leaf techniques whether you like it or not.”

Shikamaru mock-glares at him and Gaara all but glares back.

“If Naruto fails on his own time, that’s one thing, but I’m not having you mess it up for him,” Shikamaru explains, and that strange feeling from the other day washes over Gaara.

Friendship. This is what friendship is, Gaara thinks, and he can only nod in reply. Plus, learning Leaf techniques is far from the worst thing he could do with his time in Konoha.


	4. Chapter 4

Naruto wakes up to Kankurou’s purple-lined eyes staring down at him. There’s no ceiling above them, though - only the cloudless sky and the hot sun. He’s laying on sand, and of course, he has no idea how he got here. Again. He pushes himself up into a sitting position, sand sliding off of his skin reluctantly. Some of the grains are too reluctant, and when he lifts a hand to look down at it, some of the sand follows, clinging to his skin and blending in.

“Woah,” he manages, marveling at the sand armor. The perfect defense, Temari had called it before. He’s starting to remember the last time he was here. Suna. But this time, it feels like this body hasn’t had food or water in a long time. His throat is dry and scratchy. He clears it and meets Kankurou’s gaze. 

“It’s you again,” he says, breaking the odd silence as Kankurou continues to stare at him cautiously.

Kankurou’s eyebrows come together in a frown before he replies.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” he says, somewhat heistantly. “Ever since the other day...”

How could they be keeping an eye on him? Naruto shakes his head. He can’t process this sort of information when he first wakes up. This whole thing is bizarre enough as it is. He tries to stand, finding that he needs to push himself up off of the ground. He feels weak. Sand trails after him as he rises, though. The sand really seems to want to cling to this body. _Creepy_ , he shudders. He can’t get used to that.

Kankurou takes a step back, and Naruto notices Temari is not here this time. His head hurts, though, and worst of all - the murmuring is back. This body sucks.

“Not this again,” he says, pressing his hand to his temple. Kankurou backs up even further, eyes wide.

“Gaara?” he asks carefully. “Are you…?”

“I’m _not_ Gaara,” Naruto says, annoyed, but his voice comes out rougher than intended. Harsh with the lack of water. He thought they already went over this. He wonders if Kankurou doesn’t remember. He’s not sure how long ago it was since he was last in this body. A few days ago maybe? Or was it really a dream? The timeline for this whole thing is getting really strange, he thinks.

“Is _he_ coming out?” Kankurou all but whispers, sounding way more worried than he really needs to.

“Who?” Naruto asks, because the question doesn’t even make sense. Gaara’s not going to just come back somehow. Naruto doesn’t even know how this is happening, although he assumes Gaara is in Naruto’s own body right now. He wonders what day it is in Konoha. Hopefully he hasn’t missed the exams!

“The demon of course,” Kankurou says, interrupting his thoughts, but he frowns at Naruto in a different way now, as if he’s considering something else entirely. 

“Wait a second,” he says, suddenly suspicious. Naruto’s curiosity perks up at the word _demon_ , overriding some of his weariness.

“A demon?” he asks, before the older boy can continue. “So that’s what all of this is about!” Naruto tries to take a step forward, but he belatedly realizes that his body isn’t participating and he nearly falls over. His knees bend precariously, and he feels _exhausted_ now.

“What has this guy been up to in this body?” Naruto says, but Kankurou’s just staring at him now, completely unhelpfully. 

“Not you again!” Kankurou says suddenly, scowling. “You’re that kid from Konoha!”

“It’s Uzumaki Naruto! You better believe it!” Naruto says, but he doesn’t feel as enthusiastic as he usually does, and he nearly stumbles when he tries to take another step forward. “Hey, can I get some help or something?” he asks. “I don’t know what Gaara was doing, but I don’t feel so good…”

Kankurou looks torn between disbelieving and concerned, but eventually nods and offers Naruto a canteen. Kankurou looks even more surprised when Naruto takes it. Kankurou stares down at Naruto’s hand, holding the bottle.

“What?” Naruto asks, looking, too, but he doesn’t see anything strange. “Does the sand creep you out, too?” 

Kankurou shakes his head, as if he’s clearing his thoughts, and he finally shrugs.

“No…” he says, trailing off. “No, come on. Let’s get you back to Suna,” he continues. “We’ll get you some food, and…” he frowns at this last part. “And, Temari will know what to do.”

Naruto doesn’t think Kankurou sounds very sure about that, but whatever they’re going to do about this situation, it’s better than hanging out here in the hot desert all day. 

“You’re carrying the gourd,” Kankurou adds, when Naruto starts trailing after him. Naruto looks behind them at a huge gourd laying on the ground, half-buried in sand.

“Huh? I need to carry _that_ back with us?” he asks, mystified at what it could be. He vaguely recalls seeing it in Gaara’s rooms the last time he was in Suna, but neither Temari or Kankurou mentioned it at the time.

Kankurou nods, “Gaara usually carries that thing with him everywhere.”

Naruto frowns, and pulls the aforementioned gourd out of the sand. “Woah,” he says, nearly overbalancing. It’s incredibly heavy. 

“It’s full of sand,” Kankurou says, wryly. 

“And what’s yours full of then?” Naruto asks, pointing to the wrapped bundle on Kankurou’s back.

“Puppets,” Kankurou replies, but doesn’t elaborate. 

“Puppets?” Naruto asks, and Kankurou just nods and starts walking. Naruto trudges behind, carrying Gaara’s huge sand gourd, apparently not getting any further answers from Kankurou about the puppets. Somehow this was not how he was expecting to spend his day.

\---

“So what’s this demon all about anyways?” Naruto finally asks, after he’s gotten cleaned up a bit and presented with some food. He thought about it on the walk back to Suna, but Kankurou didn’t say much. 

The siblings are both watching him as if they’ve never seen Gaara eat food before. Temari’s leaning on her large fan, and Kankurou’s sitting at the table with Naruto. It’s a little disconcerting that they do this. Surely Gaara eats in front of them. But maybe not… the guy seems pretty weird, and Naruto doesn’t know Gaara _at all_ , so he doesn’t really know how to act in this body. The staff all seem terrified of him regardless of what he does, anyways, but at least the siblings will talk to him. He shrugs and eats more out of his bowl.

“You told him?” Temari hisses at Kankurou, and Kankurou has the decency to look a little embarrassed about it, although it’s hard to tell under all of the face paint.

“It was sort of an accident,” he says, but Temari stands up straight and smacks him with the fan that she had been leaning on anyways.

“I can hear it talking to me,” Naruto says, plainly. “It’s not like I wouldn’t figured it out eventually.” What, do they think he’s an idiot? It’s obviously not _Gaara’s_ voice. Not if Gaara’s switching bodies with Naruto, as Naruto’s starting to suspect.

“We didn’t think _you_ were going to come back!” Temari snaps at him, but then she sits down at the table too, leaning her fan against her chair, and sighs.

“Gaara is… he has something sealed inside of him,” Temari starts, and Naruto feels unsettled at the wording. His hand lowers to where seal would be on his own stomach suddenly, but quickly pulls it away. Surely Gaara doesn’t have one there as well...

“Sealed?” Naruto asks, and Kankurou nods. 

“We _really_ can’t say anything else about it,” Temari says firmly, and she glares at Kankurou as she does it. He rolls his eyes at her.

“It’s not like I came out and told him,” Kankurou says, sighing. 

Naruto puts his chopsticks down. This is more serious than he thought. 

“This demon…” Naruto says, and even then, the demon whispers to him. He continues, “It wants to do… pretty terrible things.”

Temari nods, looking solemn.

“Gaara’s not very well-liked in the village,” she says, and her eyes are sad, but she looks a little guilty, too.

Naruto shakes his head, “No way, I don’t think Gaara can be such a bad guy.” He frowns. “I’d go crazy, too, if I had this _thing_ talking to me all the time.”

Temari and Kankurou exchange looks, but Naruto knows better than to ask about it. 

“We need to get rid of it!” Naruto declares, but even as he says it, he thinks maybe it’s not going to be so easy. He has a really terrible feeling about all of this.

“The demon is…” Temari says, and then stops herself.

Kankurou shrugs, “It’s not a very well-kept secret, anyways,” he says.

“He’s from another village…” Temari says, but it feels like a token protest at this point. Naruto says absolutely nothing, waiting to see where this is going. Temari sighs, again, sounding much older than any of them really are.

“Alright,” she says, and this time there’s determination in her voice. “What do you know about the tailed beasts?”

Naruto feels a chill run along his spine at the words, and the demon within Gaara’s body growls a protest at the wording. Naruto’s mind races, thinking to everything he knows.

“Just… the demon fox of Konoha. It nearly destroyed the village,” he says. “On my birthday,” he adds, glumly, and Temari’s mouth snaps shut at that.

“On… your birthday?” Kankurou asks redundantly, and Naruto nods.

“Yeah!” he says, but he doesn’t like to think about it too much. “I guess my parents died then. I don’t really know much about it.”

Temari’s giving Naruto a really weird look now. “Naruto…” she says. “Who… I mean… Who were your parents?”

Naruto stares down at his bowl, not so interested in the topic anymore. “Dunno,” he says, and then pushes his food away, glaring at them. “What does any of this have to do with anything?” 

Temari looks like she’s about to say something else, but Kankurou speaks up instead.

“The tailed-beasts - each of the shinobi villages have one,” Kankurou says, and Temari’s still giving Naruto an odd look, but Kankurou continues.

“They are - well, they’re sealed inside a person,” he says, and Naruto feels something dark rising in him. He hears whispering, but this time, it’s not the whispering of the demon inside of Gaara’s body. It’s the whispering of the villagers in Konoha. It’s the rumbling of something deep within Naruto’s own body that he hears echoing sometimes in the dark. The steady sloshing of water and the sound of metal against metal. He shivers.

“Suna’s is sealed inside Gaara,” Kankurou finishes, and then slaps both of his hands down on the table, startling Naruto. 

“There,” he says. “All the cards on the table.”

Temari rolls her eyes at him, “You’re the one who spilled it to begin with,” she says.

Kankurou shrugs and gestures to Naruto. “He would’ve figured it out eventually.”

Temari looks like she thinks Kankurou’s giving Naruto too much credit, and Naruto’s beginning to think that’s not too far from the truth.

“I’m one, too,” Naruto says suddenly, more sure of this than he has been of anything else.

“You’re what?” Kankurou says, and Temari stands abruptly.

“I knew it!” she says, pointing at him. “It’s the tailed beasts. It has to be.”

“Woah, woah, I’m missing something,” Kankurou says.

Temari makes a more emphatic gesture in Naruto’s direction. “This brat is Konoha’s demon container.”

Kankurou’s eyes widen, “You?!”

Naruto laughs awkwardly, “I mean, maybe?”

“Well how do you not _know_?” Temari presses. “This is something you either know or don’t know.” She glares at him skeptically. “You would _know_ if you were the demon container.”

Naruto shakes his head, “I don’t though, but I think I might be.”

Temari sighs. “He’s totally not,” she says. “There’s no way _Konoha_ would let some random orphan run around with their village’s greatest weapon.”

Kankurou looks thoughtful at this, but eventually agrees. “I think she’s right, Naruto,” he says, but the more Naruto thinks about it, the more the demon in Gaara’s body’s voice starts overriding his own thoughts. He can’t think straight.

“I’m tired,” Naruto says suddenly, and he is. In an all-consuming way, as if the weight of the realization is crushing him and Gaara’s own demon is doing its best to finish the job. Plus whatever Gaara was doing out in the desert. He stands, pushing himself up using the table.

Temari looks at him concerned for a moment, but Kankurou just nods. “You should get some sleep,” he says, and gives Temari a look. “Maybe Gaara… maybe he’ll come back in the meantime.” 

They lead him back to Gaara’s rooms, and leave him there alone not too long after that. 

A demon container, Naruto thinks, still stunned. Him? Flashes of hatred from the villagers flicker through his mind, fueling Gaara’s own demon again. The whispering is nearly unbearable. Naruto groans, pressing his hands against his head.

A few things don’t add up though.

First, if he has a demon, his demon doesn’t talk to him like Gaara’s does. _The Nine-Tailed fox demon_ , Naruto thinks, shivering. That’s what it would be, of course. But it’s never talked to Naruto. Although he’s often had a sense of… something _other_ deep down within him. Especially in those worst times, when it’s dark, and he’s lonely or angry or scared. 

Naruto also hasn’t noticed any sort of seal on Gaara’s body, but he also hasn’t looked that carefully. He touches the place on Gaara’s forehead where the kanji for “love” is scarred. Surely that’s not the seal. But he doesn’t think he can ask Temari and Kankurou about it. Somehow he doesn’t think they’d appreciate the question.  


There is one person Naruto could talk to about this though...

Naruto finds a scroll and some ink on a desk. He doesn’t care what Temari and Kankurou think. He’s more certain of this than anything he’s ever been before. He has a seal, even. He’s always had it, for as long as he could remember. Maybe Gaara has one, too.

 _I know about the demon_ , he writes, but it seems unfinished. _I think I have one sealed inside me, too._ He adds a few more lines, before the demon’s growling gets to be too much to bear. Naruto privately tells the demon to quiet down, and he could swear the thing snorts in reply. He’s not sure what else to write, so he leaves the scroll on the desk and crawls into Gaara’s bed. Even though it’s the middle of the day, he hopes he can fall asleep anyways. This is all starting to be a lot less fun than he originally thought it was.

\---

Gaara wakes up feeling oddly refreshed, especially considering he wakes up to a sand-colored ceiling instead of the ceiling of Naruto’s apartment. He sits up quickly, still remembering the dream. Shikamaru had tried to teach him Leaf techniques, but Naruto’s chakra was… odd, to say the least. His pathways felt strangely unused even though the chakra pool seemed too vast for his age and experience level. 

He thinks there was more, but the dream’s already fading. This is the worst part. Not remembering Konoha when he wakes up. He wishes he could be back there now. He -

He sees a scroll propped open on his writing desk. That definitely wasn’t there before, he thinks curiously. _Who…?_

The hope that spreads under his skin is nearly too much to bear. The demon agrees, trying to silence it with snarls of rage, but Gaara finds it easier to ignore than usual.

He carefully leaves the bed, sand trailing along behind him as it does on occasion. 

The handwriting is atrocious, he thinks, but he feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Of course it would be. It’s Naruto’s.

Something thrills through him at the discovery. _Naruto is real_ , he thinks to himself, even though the demon argues the contrary. The thought wraps around his mind, shielding it somehow. _Konoha is really like that._

But a demon? Naruto mentioned a seal on his body, but Gaara doesn’t have a seal of his own. The demon inside him was sealed into him before he was born. Gaara thinks of the mark on Naruto’s stomach. It’s hard to miss. And the scars.

He has a demon, too, Gaara thinks, and it feels true, yet somehow confusing.

Why is Naruto’s demon so quiet? Or maybe - why is Gaara’s demon so maddening?

The demon itself seems taken aback by this thought, because it quiets down briefly, before Gaara can hear it muttering again, although he can’t make out what about. Something about _too many tails_. 

Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. He places his hand on the ink, dried into the scroll. _This is reality_ , he tells himself, trying to hold it firmly in his mind. It’s too precious of a thought to lose this time, and he can already feel it slipping through his hands like so many grains of sand.


	5. Chapter 5

Gaara’s growing to like the small, crowded apartment where Naruto lives. He spends some time cleaning it when he wakes up in Konoha now. Naruto usually leaves piles of empty ramen cups or the occasional half-full carton of milk out to spoil on the counter. He’s not sure how Naruto’s survived this long, living on his own as he does. He supposes no one’s ever tried to teach Naruto how to cook, at the very least. Gaara’s tried the instant ramen, out of necessity, since there’s nothing else in the tiny apartment, and he can’t imagine eating it multiple times a day, every day of the week. Then again, he’s not really sure what he eats in Suna. It’s all a blur. Whatever one of the staff leaves in his rooms, he supposes. On good days, at least.

When Gaara wakes up in Suuna now, on the other hand, his own rooms look like a whirlwind has passed through them. Naruto’s the whirlwind, in fact. This whole situation is tearing through Gaara’s life like nothing he’s known before. Even the multiple assassination attempts couldn’t have prepared him for this.

Gaara finds himself in Konoha again today, and he pauses longer at the mirror this time, tracing the scars on Naruto’s cheeks with Naruto’s hands that are growing in familiarity the more they switch like this. The scars look new, however, different in the light that he seems them now. _I have a demon inside me_ , Naruto wrote. Gaara remembers the ink on the scroll.

And when he thinks about it, he can _feel_ the other demon lurking somewhere deep down inside of Naruto. He thinks he’s felt it, even that very first time. But how could it be so hidden? So unlike his own demon? He frowns, wondering how Naruto got the demon in the first place. Surely someone would know. _Someone had to seal it there._

He steps back from the mirror, pushing the thoughts away for now. He still has no way of telling what day it is when he wakes up, so he gets ready for school just in case. He reluctantly wears Naruto’s atrociously bright orange jumpsuit, because Shikamaru told him Naruto would never be seen without it, and he doesn’t want to stand out more than necessary. There’s nothing in the apartment that would be worthwhile to bring for lunch, so he gives up on that idea and heads to the Academy. 

It’s a school day, after all, and he’s glad for it, suddenly. The walk to the Academy is more familiar than previous times here, including the glares of the villagers he passed on his way. Shikamaru seems surprised to see him when he arrives in the classroom. Perhaps Naruto doesn’t usually arrive to class on time? But then recognition flashes across Shikamaru’s face. And something about it sticks warmly in Gaara’s chest when he realizes that Shikamaru recognizes him. 

“Oh, you’re back!” Shikamaru says, and Gaara nods, feeling a smile tugging the corner of his lips. This body has such unusual reactions to things, he thinks. He’s still getting used to them all. Or maybe it’s just that when he has his thoughts to himself like this, there are so many new things to pay attention to.

Gaara takes his place by Sakura, nodding to her cordially. She gives him a curious look and nods back. He turns around, then, keeping his voice low. 

“It’s not the exam day is it?” he asks, and Shikamaru shakes his head, smiling slightly.

“Nah, you have until the end of the week for that,” Shikamaru says, and Gaara’s relieved. He can feel Naruto’s chakra but he still can’t make heads or tails of it. He’s starting to think it might have something to do with the demon. He tries to _find_ it, the chuunin instructor’s voice fading into the background. 

He hears a low growl, rumbling, and the sound of metal clanking against metal -

An elbow in his side jolts him awake. Sakura’s frowning at him. “Wake up,” she hisses, and the chuunin instructor is staring at him as if he’d been calling his name.

Gaara stares at the instructor blankly, and the instructor shakes his head, rolling his eyes at him, as if he’s not worth bothering with. Gaara feels his face heat, of all things, and keeps his attention on the lecture for the rest of the class. But he can’t forget the feeling. He felt _it_. Naruto’s demon. There’s definitely something there.

\---

“Falling asleep in class?” Shikamaru asks over lunch, handing Gaara a bento, as usual. Gaara accepts it gratefully, glad to have someone like Shikamaru to provide him with real food. He thinks Shikamaru must do this for Naruto as well, which makes a little more sense than Naruto eating ramen for every meal.

“That’s not like you,” Shikamaru continues. “The sleeping part, that is,” he says, and takes a bite of an onigiri. “More like the _real_ Naruto though.”

Gaara shakes his head slowly. “I wasn’t sleeping… I was…” he pauses, unsure how to continue. He doesn’t meet Shikamaru’s eyes. Does Shikamaru know already about the demon lurking within Naruto? He thinks the villagers must. That would explain their reactions to Naruto. But the students in his class… they seem annoyed by Naruto at times, but not overtly malicious, like some of the villagers are.

He changes tactics. There’s no good way to bring it up, so he just comes right out with it.

“Konoha has a tailed beast?” he asks, finally looking up, and Shikamaru’s eyes narrow at the subject change.

“Yes… well, I think we do at least,” he says, in a way indicating that he hasn’t thought much about it. “The Nine-Tails nearly destroyed the village when I was a baby,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like Shikamaru lost anyone close to him, by the sounds of it.

Gaara nods, thinking about what little history he remembered. The Nine-Tails. He _had_ learned about Konoha’s tailed beast after all at some point. He knows which villages have them, but sometimes it all blends together - the history of his own village, the history of other villages. Weapons didn’t need to know much about the enemies they targeted, after all.

“But it had to have been sealed,” Gaara says, and the confusion crossing Shikamaru’s face tells him all he needs to know. Shikamaru _doesn’t_ know. Interesting.

“Sealed…” Shikamaru repeats, and it’s obvious he’s puzzling something out now.

“Tailed beasts are sealed within human containers,” Gaara continues. “Do you know who the container for the Nine-Tails is?”

Gaara feels like he would be breaking some sort of trust if he told Shikamaru outright, but Shikamaru figures it out on his own soon enough.

“It’s Naruto, isn’t it?” Shikamaru asks suddenly, eyes alight with the realization, and then he nods to himself conclusively. “Yes, of course. That’s the only possibility that makes sense.”

Gaara’s constantly amazed at the level of Shikamaru’s reasoning. He stares down again at his bento, carefully prepared by Shikamaru’s mother, he can only assume. He wonders what Shikamaru’s parents are like. 

“But he’s always unprotected,” Gaara says, still stuck on that point. Gaara can _feel_ the demon lurking within Naruto, but it doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t Naruto even know about it? Shikamaru’s quiet, still lost in thought.

“What happened to his parents?” Gaara asks carefully, voice low. 

Shikamaru frowns at that, unsure again, but even after a longer pause, he shrugs, unable to figure that one out. 

“Dunno,” he says finally, digging into his own bento again. “I don’t think Naruto even knows who they are.”

Gaara finds this unbelievable, that a village as huge and powerful as Konoha would leave their tailed-beast container running loose and unsupervised. Well, Suna does it to him, of course, but it’s not like he’s not constantly watched. And Gaara had a habit of -

Well, best not to think about stuff like that.

“It’s definitely weird though, right?” Shikamaru says, thinking out loud again. “If Naruto is the tailed beast container, how did he get the tailed beast?”

Gaara knows all too well how he got it. “On the day of the Nine-Tails attack, it would have been sealed into him,” he says.

“The attack happened -” Shikamaru’s eyes widen. “That’s his birthday. He was born on the day of the Nine-Tails attack.”

Gaara’s stomach drops at that. Of course. “So it was sealed into him -” Gaara shakes his head. “Well, it had to be sealed into him that day, so it was probably after he was born,” he says, but there’s something strange about that, too. He’s not sure how the sealing process works, but he wonders if a newborn could really survive it. He frowns.

“The Fourth Hokage is the one who saved the village from the Nine-Tails,” Shikamaru says, continuing. “But I don’t know how. He gave his life doing it.” He shrugs. “That’s what we are taught in school, at least.”

Gaara considers this, too. It’s likely the Fourth Hokage is the one who sealed the Nine-Tails into Naruto, then, but why Naruto of all people? In Suna, Gaara was the only candidate who was compatible with the demon. Perhaps similar testing was done in Konoha?

But why did the Nine-Tails break free? There are too many questions, still, and no way to find out the answers it seems. 

“How do you know so much about this stuff, anyways?” Shikamaru asks, breaking Gaara’s train of thought. Gaara feels his mouth turn up in a wry sort of smile. He might as well tell Shikamaru that much, he thinks, after having given Naruto’s own secret away.

“Because _I’m_ the container for the tailed-beast in my village,” Gaara says, and all of Shikamaru’s actions stop, as if time had frozen.

“You?” Shikamaru asks, and Gaara doesn’t think he’s ever seen Shikamaru actually speechless before, even after all of the rest of it.

Gaara nods. “My mother - well, the demon was sealed into me before I was born. My mother died…” Gaara trails off, finding himself unable to talk about it. His mother died, leaving him with the sand defense. And his father only wants to use him as a weapon.

“What village are you from?” Shikamaru asks, after another moment of silence, and Gaara shakes his head. 

“I can’t tell you that,” Gaara replies softly, and Shikamaru frowns. 

“I guess that makes sense,” he says, sighing finally. His bento’s empty now, and he wraps it back up in the cloth, offering to do the same with Gaara’s. Shikamaru grins at him then.

“I suppose I can get it out of Naruto when he’s back,” he says, and Gaara frowns further at him.

“Please don’t ask about me -” Gaara starts, but he realizes it’s probably too late. Temari and Kankurou have probably already told Naruto all about him. Naruto’s experienced the demon. He knows what it’s like, but he doesn’t know what _Gaara_ can be like when the demon completely takes hold of his mind. Gaara doesn’t want Shikamaru to know about that. He doesn’t want people in Konoha to look at him the same way they do in Suna. At least here, he knows the villagers are looking at _Naruto_. Shikamaru looks at him completely differently.

Shikamaru shakes his head, though, laughing it away. “Nah, I won’t,” he says. “Naruto doesn’t seem to remember much when he wakes up anyways. It’s bizarre.” 

“It’s the same for me,” Gaara says. “I remember it all when I’m dreaming...” He pauses, trying to get the words straight. “Or I guess when I’m here, I remember everything that’s happened, but when I wake up in my own body, it’s… difficult.”

Shikamaru nods, accepting that as an answer, and they sit in silence for a moment. Gaara wonders if Naruto will give away that he’s from Suna. He wonders if the rumors of the Kazekage’s violent son have made it all the way to Konoha. His mouth twists, something sour pooling in the pit of his stomach. He really hopes not.

“Naruto’s a tailed beast container, huh?” Shikamaru says finally. “So you can tell Naruto has something sealed in there?” he asks, making a gesture that presumably encompasses Naruto’s body.

Gaara thinks about it again, remembering the sensation he felt in the classroom, and he nods. “I can, but it’s - it’s different,” he says, and the explanation is too simple. Far too simple. But he really doesn’t want to explain any further. He shakes his head, as if to brush the thoughts away. “Naruto’s demon - it’s easy to miss. I doubt he even knew he had it until recently.”

“Why would he find out now?” Shikamaru asks, but then pauses. “Oh - he could tell from being in your body?”

“Something like that,” Gaara mutters, looking down at his hands, for nothing better to do. When he’s dreaming - when he’s in Konoha like this - it’s still shocking sometimes to look down and see hands that aren’t his own. It’s like a splash of cold water. _This is reality,_ he reminds himself. _I’m not dreaming. I’m really here._

“And the Fourth Hokage sealed it into him?” Shikamaru asks, half a question, half-supposition, reflecting Gaara’s earlier thoughts. Gaara wonders if Naruto could be - but there’s no way. Surely the village wouldn’t let the son of a Kage live the way Naruto does. Gaara doesn’t even mention it. He shrugs. He doesn’t know that much about Konoha’s history, other than the few bits he’s learned in the classes he’s attended as Naruto, so Shikamaru would know better than he would. 

“The people in my village -” Gaara starts, but he’s growing more uncomfortable talking about this. “Well, the people in _this_ village seem to know that Naruto is the demon container, but you didn’t know.”

Shikamaru seems to think about that for a while, but he eventually shakes his head. “I didn’t,” he acknowledges, and this seems to trouble him even more than the rest of it.

Gaara lets the subject drop as they fall into silence. He thinks Shikamaru is going to be considering this one for a while.

\---

After classes are over, Shikamaru offers to train with Gaara again, but Gaara waves it off. He’s not feeling like training again. 

Shikamaru pauses, kicking at the dirt a bit, and then looking up at the sky. “You could come over,” he says, “For dinner, if you want. We don’t have to train.”

Gaara’s never received this kind of invitation before. He almost expects his demon to perk up and cause trouble, but there’s only silence in his mind when he’s in this body. He breathes in deeply. He’s waiting too long to answer, and Shikamaru’s starting to look unsure about having offered it in the first place.

“Yes,” he finds himself saying. “I would like that.”

Shikamaru smiles at him then. “Well let’s go!”

On the walk there, Shikamaru warns him, “Try not to talk to much to my dad,” he says. “He might not even be home until later tonight.”

Gaara frowns, “Why not?” He’s familiar with reasons why he might want to avoid his own father, but Shikamaru seems to have a peaceful home life as far as Gaara can tell. At least the hand-made bentos seem to point to something like that.

Shikamaru’s mouth twitches up into a grin of sorts. “Ah, he’s the jounin commander of the village…” Shikamaru says, trailing off. “He’s really good at figuring out things.”

Gaara nearly trips at that. There’s no way he’ll be able to hold up anything remotely like Naruto’s personality to convince anyone. He doesn’t even know what Naruto’s personality is like, other than it must be the opposite of Gaara’s. He mainly tries to just be as quiet as possible in class, but it seems like some of the classmates are suspicious. Especially Sakura, he thinks. 

Shikamaru’s mother responds in greeting as they announce their arrival, and Shikamaru’s father is thankfully, not there. Gaara bows politely to Shikamaru’s mother who looks to be working on making dinner, and she looks surprised, but says, “It’s always good to see you, Naruto.” 

Shikamaru tugs on Gaara’s sleeve, and Gaara bows again to leave. Shikamaru elbows him in the hallway.

“Naruto is _never_ that polite,” he manages, repressing laughter. “I’m so glad my father isn’t here.”

Gaara’s face heats. “I can’t be rude to your mother...” he whispers, but Shikamaru waves him off.

“I don’t know how you’re going to survive dinner, but I thought you might like it more than whatever Naruto has at his apartment.”

Gaara frowns at that. “Ramen…” 

Shikamaru nods in complete understanding. “He eats nothing but ramen.”

“And you bring bentos for him,” Gaara adds, and Shikamaru’s face turns red. He doesn’t say anything in reply. Instead, he throws a book at Gaara, and Gaara fumbles the catch, nearly dropping it. He’s not used to having things _thrown_ at him. The sand armor would prevent anything from getting that close to his body usually. It’s a bizarre feeling.

He turns the book over in his hands. “Manga?” he asks, and Shikamaru snorts.

“Of course,” Shikamaru says. “Tell me if you like it. Chouji has some of the other ones in the series.”

Gaara’s never read manga before, but he’s willing to try. He finds himself enjoying it far more than he thought he would until it’s time for them to do dinner. The more time he spends in Konoha, the less and less he ever wants to leave.


	6. Chapter 6

Naruto’s never sure what to do with his time when he’s in Suna. It doesn’t seem like Gaara has anything that he _does_ on a regular basis, other than train endlessly. And his body always feels completely exhausted because of it. Today’s more of the same. He woke up in Gaara’s room this time, at least, but everything ached, and on waking, he remembered _everything_ about when he was here last. Talking to Temari and Kankurou. Writing Gaara a note. Being a demon container. He tries not to think of that last part though. 

Instead, Naruto searches _everywhere_ in Gaara’s room, but there’s no note for him. It’s obvious Gaara read Naruto’s note though, because the scroll is missing from the spot he left it, and he finds it in his search of the room, tucked away carefully on a shelf. Naruto leaves it there. Maybe Gaara will write him something today, and it will be waiting for him in Konoha. He desperately wants to talk to Gaara. It’s so weird to be sharing bodies with each other but never to have spoken to the other person.

“But, what does he _do_ every day?” Naruto asks Kankurou over breakfast, trying to shovel rice into his mouth while talking. Kankurou and Temari warned him to find them if he ever wakes up in the Suna administration building and made him promise not to talk to any of the staff. He reluctantly agreed at the time, but it seems so sad. Gaara doesn’t seem to have any friends or anything that he does. He doesn’t even go to Academy as far as Naruto can tell. 

Kankurou gives him a puzzled look at the question, and Naruto nearly chokes on his food as he inhales to elaborate. He tries to slow down a bit, but this body is always _starving_. Naruto doesn’t know how Gaara can stand it. 

Kankurou shrugs finally, “He just trains,” he says. “Or wanders the desert, I guess.” Kankurou’s eating his own breakfast at a more sedate pace. “Sometimes Temari or I follow him.”

Naruto makes a face. “That’s lame. Training’s boring,” he says, and he pauses with the chopsticks in front of his mouth when Kankurou stares at him flatly.

“Don’t tell me -” Kankurou begins, but Naruto waves the chopsticks at him, not wanting to be yelled at by someone else. He gets enough from people in his own village.

“Iruka-sensei’s always lecturing me about it,” Naruto says, in a rush. “I guess I’m not very good at sparring,” he admits, looking down at the table. He’s never really said it out loud before. He thinks about how Shikamaru told him all about how Gaara nearly beat Sasuke on the day that _Naruto_ was supposed to spar with him. Sasuke always beats Naruto, and then Sakura teases him even more. Gaara’s demon perks up at that, telling him all the ways he could kill them both. Stupid demon. 

Kankurou’s been quiet for an awful long time, so Naruto looks up at him finally, and Kankurou’s just staring at him like he’s the strangest thing he’s ever seen.

“What?” Naruto asks, and Kankurou shakes his head. 

“I’ve just never seen Gaara make that face before,” he says, and his expression changes quickly to one closer to disbelief. “Also, what’s wrong with Konoha? You’re supposed to be the weapon that protects the village!”

Naruto stands up at that, unable to take it any longer. “Konoha’s great, you better believe it! I’m going to be the Hokage one day!”

Kankurou pulls a face at him. “I don’t think you can be the Hokage with terrible sparring skills,” he says. “I can’t believe Konoha isn’t training their tailed-beast container. Are you even a genin?” he asks, skeptically.

Naruto feels his face heat at that. He’s not sure how he likes being called a beast container, for one thing. “I’m in Academy! I have my genin test later -” He stumbles over the sentence, suddenly unsure of what day it actually is. “Well sometime soon,” he finishes. 

“And are you even going to pass it?” Kankurou prods at him, and he has a point. Naruto’s trying to be positive about it, but part of him is worried. What if they ask him about _clones_? Or… well, really anything else. He’s not very good at any other jutsu either...

Naruto shrugs. “I dunno.” 

Kankurou sighs. “Look kid. I don’t know what’s going on with Konoha, but things are a little different here.” He crosses his arms, face serious. “Gaara’s life is _constantly_ in danger. He has _assassins_ sent after him.” Kankurou points at Naruto. “ _You_ are going to get him killed.”

“Am not,” Naruto mumbles, but it’s half-hearted at best. The more he’s in this body, with this dark voice whispering in his head - in this strange land, where he wakes up exhausted and starving, sometimes in the middle of the desert - he is getting a little worried about it, if he’s honest. Assassins?

“At least you have the sand armor,” Kankurou says, sounding a bit apologetic. Naruto shrugs, feeling pretty bad about his prospects. The demon’s whispering isn’t helping either. He thinks maybe he should just go back to bed.

“Hey, why don’t we train together?” Kankurou asks, and Naruto thinks that sounds awful but he nods anyways. Kankurou frowns. “We should probably ask Temari to join.” He shudders. “I hope she’s not too hard on you.”

Naruto’s not sure if the day could get any worse, but he supposes he’s about to find out. 

\---

Temari glares at him in a way that he imagines only an older sister could, and Naruto feels very worried all of a sudden. Kankurou shrugs unhelpfully.

“Well what jutsu can you use then?” she asks. Naruto thinks immediately of his “sexy jutsu” and decides it’s not a good time for that one.

“Plenty!” he shouts, instead, but he can’t actually think of anything else. “Ah… transformation jutsu?”

Temari shakes her head. “Hopeless,” she mutters, and then to Kankurou she says, “We’re just going to have to keep an eye on him at all times.”

“Come on sis,” Kankurou replies, rolling his eyes at her. “Give the kid a break.”

Kankurou’s got a huge bundle of something on his back. Naruto’s noticed it before, but he has no idea what it is. The last time he tried to ask, Kankurou said something about puppets, but surely Kankurou doesn’t really carry _puppets_ around with him everywhere. Kankurou put it on before they made their way out into the desert and made him carry the gourd again as well. The older siblings didn’t want to use regular training grounds for fear of being seen. “No one else can know about this,” Temari had stressed, and Naruto’s starting to see the reason why. Gaara’s position in Suna is way more precarious than Naruto’s own position in Konoha. 

Now, though, Temari shakes her head, and looks at him like he’s never going to amount to anything. Naruto hates that look even more than the others. He wants to prove her wrong. 

“I still can’t believe Konoha is letting their demon container run around like this,” she says, waving a hand at Naruto.

“Hey! Stop calling me that!” Naruto says, but a small part of him speaks up, hinting that maybe she’s right - probably emphasized by Gaara’s own demon. 

When he woke up in Konoha last time, he couldn’t remember much of anything, but he did remember the idea that there could be a demon sealed inside of him. The Nine-Tailed Fox demon that nearly destroyed Konoha, even. He tried to talk to it, but he felt silly. It didn’t even reply. Whatever it is, if it’s even there, it’s nothing like Gaara’s demon. The longer he was awake, the more he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. But now he’s back in Suna. And he _remembers_. He thinks of all of the times the villagers spat on him or kicked him out of food stalls. He thinks of the way they look at him when he passes them on the street. The way adults will pull kids his own age away from him. 

_They know something_ , he realizes, and it slides over him like something slimy. The adults know something that kids his own age don’t know. A secret.

The demon’s the only thing that makes sense. He frowns, crossing his arms.

“I need to train,” he says finally, and Temari looks at him in surprise. He feels his face heating again but he tries to stand up straighter.

“What! I do! You just said so,” he says. “And plus I need to beat Sasuke. And become the Hokage one day.”

Temari shakes her head, and Kankurou smiles at him a little.

“Well, I do!” Naruto says, “So train me!”

“Alright, _little brother_ ,” Temari says, and this time her grin is a little more vicious. 

“You know, this will be fun, sis,” Kankurou chimes in, with a more reasonable tone. “We’d never get to spar with Gaara for real.”

Temari shushes him, and pulls her fan off of her back, opening it dramatically. “Show me what you’ve got, kid,” she says, and Naruto’s a little intimidated. He’s only ever sparred with kids in his class before. He throws himself at her. Reckless. 

He flinches when he realizes Temari’s fan is going to connect directly with his body, tries to redirect, but it’s too late. He braces himself for the impact.

He finds himself facing a wall of sand, instead, and he can hear Temari’s attack bounce off of it. 

“Woah,” he says, suddenly unsure about sparring in Gaara’s body. 

Temari drops her stance and sighs, “That’s not going to work at all, is it?”

Naruto blinks owlishly at her as the sand wall disintegrates. “I dunno. You would know better than me.”

Temari nods once, “Right, we’ll have to only train jutsu then. The sand armor will prevent any physical attacks, but you should really know some basic jutsu just in case.”

Naruto’s a little bummed about that. He wanted to learn some new techniques for sparring with Sasuke in class, but he really does need practice with his jutsu, too.

“Sand clones,” Kankurou says, and it sounds out of context for a second, but then Naruto groans.

“Not clones!!” he says.

“I thought you said you were good at transformation techniques,” Kankurou points out, and Naruto frowns.

“Yeah but -” 

“It’s not that much harder,” Temari counters. “We’ll start out with the basic one, and then teach you the sand version.” She frowns, “I guess it’s weird for someone from Konoha to learn to use one of our techniques.” 

“It would be weirder if he _couldn’t_ do a sand clone, though,” Kankurou says, and Temari nods.

“Right,” she says, convinced. “The sand armor should protect you, but this is also about appearances. You _cannot_ be allowed to make Gaara appear weak under _any_ circumstances. Okay?”

Naruto nods, feeling appropriately serious about the whole thing. He thinks somehow that maybe Gaara gets the better deal in all of this. Gaara’s probably just sleeping through class or something. Naruto wonders if Gaara is the kind of person who sleeps through class and thinks probably not.

“Okay, Temari- _sensei_ ,” he says, and she scowls at him. “Let’s do this.”

\---

When Naruto finally wakes up in Konoha, he groans aloud to find _this_ body exhausted, too. He sits up, about to say something really disparaging about the person who was roaming about it in last, when he sees the piece of paper, folded and stuck into the corner of the mirror. 

_Shikamaru knows about the demons_ , he reads.

“What a jerk!” Naruto says to the room before he even reads the rest, but the room doesn’t reply. Also it’s a lot cleaner than normal. Maybe Gaara’s not such a jerk after all, but it really sucks that Shikamaru knows, too, now. Naruto’s still just figuring all of this out himself.

He continues reading. _Thank you for writing to me._

There’s nothing else. Not even a name. Gaara, Naruto thinks. That’s his name. Gaara, Temari, and Kankurou, and they all live in Suna. And Temari and Kankurou taught him how to use clones! He can manage one now when he’s never been able to do it before. He jumps in excitement, ready to try one here in his actual body. He starts to make the hand signs, but realizes, suddenly that his chakra feels different.

He tries to cling onto the memory of the feeling of Gaara’s chakra, but it’s so different from his own. Tries to channel his chakra into something similar to Gaara’s, but his chakra feels vast and wild. And _dark_. Somewhere beneath it all, there’s a flash of sharp teeth, and the sound of dripping water.

He doesn’t think some of this is his chakra at all, actually, and he - he _stumbles_ \- somehow, and it all slips from his grasp, and the clone that was forming is a weak, pathetic thing, barely able to be recognized as a human. Naruto sighs in disappointment, releasing it, and the memory of Gaara’s chakra starts fading entirely. 

Did he even really learn how to make a clone? Or was it just a dream after all?

The slip of paper with Gaara’s message on it falls off the mirror, where he had hastily shoved it back into the frame earlier, landing on the floor next to his feet. He bends down to pick it up. The unfamiliar handwriting a glaring reminder that Gaara is real. Surely it was _all_ real. Naruto has the sudden urge to write Gaara’s name down, just so he doesn’t forget it, but he pauses.

 _Shikamaru knows_ , he reads again, and he nods decisively. Right. Well, even if _his_ memories are growing hazy, Shikamaru is bound to remember everything. Shikamaru’s the smartest person he knows.

But first, ramen. And then Academy. And then… well, and then Naruto is going to figure this out!

\---

Naruto’s running a little late to class today, and he tries to sneak in but Iruka-sensei notices right away and yells at him in front of the whole class. Shikamaru looks sympathetic and Chouji’s not even paying attention, but some of his other classmates giggle or shake their heads at him. He hates that feeling. So Naruto tries to be quiet and not get into any more trouble, and the first chance he gets to talk to Shikamaru is over lunch. Unfortunately, Shikamaru refuses to tell Naruto much about Gaara.

“But why?” Naruto asks again, and Shikamaru shrugs.

“Ask him yourself,” Shikamaru replies, obviously uncomfortable about the whole thing.

“Fine,” Naruto pouts. “I’ll write him another note. He better write more back this time.”

“So you really don’t remember what you did yesterday?” Shikamaru asks, and Naruto shakes his head.

“I did this morning, but it’s getting all fuzzy now. Gaara’s sister taught me how to make clones, I think, but now I can’t do them anymore,” Naruto says, and kicks at the dirt. 

“Hmmm,” Shikamaru says, “Gaara did say that it’s difficult for him to use your chakra, too.”

Naruto nods, glumly. Maybe there’s something wrong with him.

“It seems that your chakra abilities are different somehow,” Shikamaru continues. He frowns. “It doesn’t make much sense though. I thought chakra was all supposed to come from the same source.”

Naruto frowns at this. “I _can_ use it sometimes, you know.”

“Maybe you just need to practice more?” Shikamaru says, and Naruto whines.

“Not you, too! You sound like his sister.”

Shikamaru pulls a face at that. 

“Gaara told me about the demon,” Naruto says, instead, wanting to avoid the chakra conversation. The more he thinks about it, the more he’s worried he’s not going to pass his Academy exam after all.

“He mentioned that,” Shikamaru says, and then frowns. “You don’t know who your parents were at all, do you?”

Naruto shakes his head, and this whole thing is making him feel really sad.

“It’s a little odd that the village leaders wouldn’t be keeping better tabs on you,” Shikamaru says, and that phrase sounds so familiar that Naruto has to laugh.

“Now you _really_ sound like Gaara’s sister,” Naruto teases. Shikamaru rolls his eyes at him, but doesn’t say anything else. Naruto’s having trouble remembering Gaara’s sister’s name now. The dream is fading more and more in the bright light of day.

“It _is_ real, isn’t it?” Naruto asks softly, and Shikamaru gives him a surprised look.

“What do you mean?” Shikamaru asks.

Naruto waves a hand, “All of this. The demon. Gaara.” Naruto rubs his forehead. “I’m having trouble remembering what day it is. Everything’s getting so jumbled together.”

Shikamaru looks concerned. “Gaara said he doesn’t remember what happens when he wakes up either.”

Naruto squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. He thinks of the piece of paper in his room. Gaara’s handwriting. _It’s definitely real._

“And I’ve met him, Naruto,” Shikamaru assure him. “I spent all day with him yesterday. It definitely wasn’t _you_.”

Naruto snorts, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shikamaru shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why you can’t remember what happens when you fall asleep and switch places. But it’s not a dream. _It’s actually happening._ ”

Naruto nods, feeling a little relieved to hear Shikamaru say it outloud. 

“Okay, okay,” Naruto says, sighing.

“You should write down what you remember when you wake up,” Shikamaru suggests, and it sounds too much like a school assignment, but Naruto supposes it’s probably a good idea.

“Like a diary?” he scowls, and Shikamaru laughs. 

“Exactly like a diary, idiot,” he replies, and Naruto smiles a little.

Once lunch is over and they get back into the classroom, Naruto starts writing down everything he can possibly remember of what’s happened so far. There’s not a lot. Mostly he remembers sand. The weight of a huge gourd on his back. The feeling of making a clone. He writes down Gaara’s name, too. If he thinks too hard about it, it fades. But Shikamaru will remember, even if he doesn’t. It has to be enough. 


	7. Chapter 7

Gaara wakes up in an exceedingly uncomfortable position. His neck hurts. He slowly raises his head off of his crossed arms, which are asleep. And also not his arms. He looks around to find himself in the middle of a lecture. The chuunin-sensei gives him a disappointed look but says nothing, and for that Gaara is thankful.

It seems like it’s past lunch time, and Naruto must have been sleeping in class. Gaara feels momentarily bad for him. He’ll probably be waking up in the middle of the desert again. They hadn’t swapped bodies for a few days, he thinks, but most of that is probably due to Gaara’s lack of sleep. He sleeps more often now that he wakes up in Konoha on occasion, but sleep is still a battle for him. A fight between him and the tanuki demon that possesses his body and threatens to take it over, wanting to murder everyone in the village. It’s hard to sleep when you’re worried about that sort of thing. Gaara usually doesn’t until his body gives way to the inevitable. 

The chuunin-sensei’s saying something suddenly that catches Gaara’s attention, though.

“We’ll proceed to the exam room, and you will each be given the exam individually,” the chuunin is saying, and Gaara feels his stomach drop. No. Surely _this_ is a dream. A nightmare perhaps. But the chuunin-sensei continues. “We will let you know whether you pass or fail at the time of the exam. Please do your best!”

Gaara feels like this last remark is personally directed towards him. Well, it was probably directed towards Naruto, but Gaara’s pretty sure he needs it as well.

The other students start packing up their things and standing up, but Gaara remains rooted to his seat. The Academy exam? He has no idea what to do. He wishes desperately that they’d switch back. What if he tried going back to sleep? But he thinks it doesn’t work that way. It seems like they only switch if both of them are sleeping at the same time.

“Naruto? You okay?” Shikamaru says, pushing his shoulder, and Gaara looks up at him, eyes wide with panic.

“Shit,” Shikamaru says, and Gaara vaguely thinks that he’s never heard Shikamaru curse before. “You’re not Naruto.”

Gaara shakes his head, feeling sick with fear.

“You’ll do fine,” Shikamaru says, in a whisper. “Come on, you can do it.”

Gaara shakes his head again, even faster this time. “I - I still can’t use his chakra,” he hisses.

He thinks Sakura gives him a weird look but she shrugs and heads out the door with Ino. They’re arguing about something, naturally.

“You have to try,” Shikamaru says, offering Gaara a hand. “That’s the only thing to do.”

Gaara just stares at Shikamaru’s hand for a second, but finally takes it, getting to his feet. He feels nearly dizzy. He’s sure this is how it will start. This is where he will lose this place he’s found. _These friends._ He’s going to disappoint them, and then he’ll get angry, and -

“Gaara,” Shikamaru says. “We’re going to be late for the test. Naruto will be more upset if you don’t even try.”

Gaara nods, and forces himself to follow Shikamaru through the Academy building to the place where all of the other students are waiting, some of them talking and some of them quiet with anxiety, he supposes.

“Naruto’s probably going to be mad either way,” Shikamaru says in a tone that suggests he’s trying to cheer Gaara up. “If he’s not the one to take the test, and you do pass, he’ll probably be bummed.”

“I can’t…” Gaara says, and Shikamaru gives him a level look.

“If you can take on Sasuke in a taijutsu match, you’ll be fine on the Academy test, Gaara,” Shikamaru says, and although he’s trying to be comforting, there’s still that sick fear roiling through Gaara’s stomach.

“It’s going to be a jutsu,” Gaara says, closing his eyes tightly, and Shikamaru just puts his hand on Gaara’s shoulder.

“Okay, so when Naruto came back the last time, he said that he had trouble using his own chakra,” Shikamaru says. “He said your sister taught him how to make clones, but he couldn’t do them in his own body - that his chakra felt too different.”

Gaara nods, “It does. It’s completely unlike my own.”

Shikamaru frowns, but can’t seem to come up with a solution before he’s called away to take the exam. He raises his hand in a small wave before the exam proctor closes the door. Gaara closes his eyes, trying to breathe. He’ll just try - he’s not sure what he’s going to try - but he’ll just try _something_. 

Gaara tries pleading with the demon that resides deep within Naruto.

“I know you’re in there somewhere,” he mutters, but there’s no reply. He can’t find that calmness that he had previously. His own demon seems to always be on the surface of his thoughts, but Naruto’s demon is buried much deeper. Nearly inaccessible. Something about that pings at Gaara’s thoughts, piquing his curiosity before the worry crashes back over him again.

Naruto is last student to be called in to take the exam. Gaara thinks hopefully that perhaps they won’t call on him at all, that maybe they will forget and have to do it another day. But the unfamiliar exam proctor peeks his head out of the door one final time. 

“Uzumaki Naruto,” he says. Gaara nods nervously, and enters the room in complete silence.

The chuunin-sensei, Iruka, is sitting at a table along with the other exam proctor. “Please show us the Clone jutsu,” Iruka says, and Gaara feels sweat collecting under Naruto’s ridiculous orange jumpsuit. He nods, unable to speak.

Iruka’s expression changes, almost as if he wants to say something, or that Gaara’s doing something unusual, but Gaara closes his eyes again. He _has_ to do this. He has no choice now. 

“Help me out here,” he thinks to the demon. “Seriously, help me out.”

He feels for Naruto’s chakra frantically - it’s a mess. Totally entangled in _something else_ , and Gaara thinks that _something else_ must belong to the Nine-Tails. He tries to touch it, curious, and suddenly has the sensation of being watched. He hears water dripping somewhere, but it’s so dark - he can’t see where he’s going - he thinks the water’s rising above his ankles. He tries to look where he’s going but it seems like there are bars that rise up - too far for him to see where they end -

“Naruto!” Iruka shouts, and Gaara’s eyes snap open. Naruto’s body feels peculiar, like it’s shrouded in the sand armor, almost. 

Gaara’s not sure what’s wrong at first, but he feels limitless suddenly. Similarly to when the tanuki tries to take over. He feels like he could make a hundred clones. Suddenly, he wants _more_ of the power. There’s something smiling darkly in the back of his thoughts, and it _sings_ to him. This is nothing like the tanuki demon. This is much more sinister -

“Woah, woah,” the other exam proctor is saying. “Easy now,” he’s standing up, and both of the proctors look fearful. Gaara likes their fear, he thinks. But he hears something else, suddenly. It sounds like _his_ name. He feels a pulling sensation, and  -

\- he’s suddenly laying on the ground, and his eyes are closed again. He opens them, and Kankurou’s staring down at him. The air is dry, the sun is harsh above them, and the sky is void of clouds.The sand whirls around him, and the tanuki demon is oddly quiet for once, given his location.

“Hey kid,” Kankurou says. “You okay?”

Gaara just stares back at his brother.

“Did I rattle something important in there?” Kankurou asks.

“Why am I on the _ground_?” Gaara growls, and Kankurou takes a step back.

“Woah, it’s you!” he says, “How’d you get back?”

Gaara sits up, the sand reforms and clings to him as it always does, comforting him in it’s own strange way. The tanuki demon laughs darkly in the back of his thoughts. He shivers, thinking of the brush with Naruto’s demon. The tanuki demon is an ever-present menace, but Naruto’s demon seems like something else entirely.

“I don’t know,” he says simply. He shivers, remembering the demon, and the dark chakra. Something about touching that chakra - something pulled him back.

He shakes his head to clear it and stands. Kankurou takes another step back, and it pains Gaara to see. The tanuki demon perks up, starting its muttering.

“Let’s go back,” he says to Kankurou, and Kankurou nods. 

\---

Naruto opens his eyes in the middle of what appears to be his Academy exam.

“Um, hello?” he says. Iruka-sensei is staring at him like he’s never seen him before, and the other teacher looks a little frightened. “What’s wrong?”

“Naruto -” Iruka begins, inching a bit closer. “Are you - uh, are you feeling okay?”

Naruto thinks about it for a moment. The last thing he remembers, Kankurou was sparring with him. He didn’t think that was fair given the fact that he had woken up in the desert _again_ , but he didn’t feel as bad as he did the last time, and he _really_ wanted to be able to train with Gaara’s siblings. He begged Kankurou to train with him, even though Gaara’s body was already exhausted.

He thinks he must have passed out again. He feels a little bad for leaving Gaara in that state.

“Sure!” Naruto says cheerfully, because _this_ body feels great, and he feels really happy that he got to practice the clone technique again. He wants to try it again before he forgets. He can still feel the heat of the desert sun on his skin, even in the Academy room. He _remembers_. He starts the hand signs, and he tries to navigate the unfamiliar feeling of his own chakra. He closes his eyes and imagines how Gaara’s chakra felt when he made the clones, but there’s so much more chakra here now, and it feels _wild_. 

He’s feeling reckless anyways, so he grabs at it. He hears a gasp and opens his eyes.

The room is full of clones. He grins. “What do you think?” he asks, and Iruka-sensei’s completely speechless, and Naruto feels immensely proud all of a sudden.

The other teacher gives him a considering look and then elbows Iruka.

“Ah, Naruto,” Iruka says clearing his throat. “You pass of course.”

Shikamaru stares at him when he comes out of the other door in the room, into the area where the rest of the passing students are waiting.

“What _was_ that?” Shikamaru asks, and Naruto’s grin falters a bit.

“What was what?” he asks, and Shikamaru does a double take.

“ _Naruto?_ ” he says, eyebrows raising in surprise.

“You better believe it!” Naruto says. “Hey look! I got a headband!” He holds out the cloth bearing the metal band with Konoha’s leaf on it. He can’t wait to put it on.

“Naruto,” Shikamaru says again, and then in a lower voice. “But where’s Gaara?”

Naruto shrugs, unsure of what caused the switch. “I dunno. I think I passed out again.”

“You what?!” Shikamaru asks, but then shakes his head. “But wait, so what was that weird chakra then?”

“Huh?” Naruto replies, completely not following at this point. Some of the other students are giving him really odd looks, and Shikamaru continues, voice low.

“We all felt it - something _dark_ ,” Shikamaru says, and Naruto feels a sense of foreboding. He wonders… but nah, it couldn’t have been… Could it?

“Do you think…” Naruto starts, but then Iruka-sensei and the other exam proctor open the door.

“Congratulations!” he says. “Every single one of you passed your Academy exam this year. I’m so proud of you all!”

Another door opens, and suddenly the room is filling with people’s parents, including Shikamaru’s own. Shikamaru’s father, the jounin commander, is even there, and Naruto backs away, suddenly unsure of his place among all of them. He finds himself meeting eyes with Sasuke of all people, and turns his face away quickly, his cheeks burning.

Stupid Sasuke. He’ll definitely show him up now! 

Iruka-sensei’s on the other side of him all of a sudden, and he looks… pleased, Naruto thinks. For once, Iruka looks pleased with him.

“You did well, Naruto,” Iruka says, and Naruto’s eyes burn with something that’s definitely not tears.

The other students are leaving with their parents now, and even Sasuke’s gone. Shikamaru gives Naruto an apologetic wave as he leaves with his mother and father.

“Would you - ah, would you like to get some ramen, Naruto?” Iruka asks, and Naruto feels warm all over, turning the full force of his happiness on Iruka.

“You better believe it!” he says, and Iruka laughs. 

“Alright, let me just finish up a few things here, and then we’ll go,” Iruka replies.

Naruto nods, thinking he needs to write a note anyways. Everything’s going to slip away soon, but he _needs_ to tell Gaara that they did it! 

“I’ll meet you there, Iruka-sensei!” he says, in a rush, and Iruka looks surprised but agrees to meet him. Naruto quickly ties his headband on his forehead, and then runs full speed back to his apartment, which isn’t that far from the Academy anyways. He wants _everyone_ to know that he’s a genin now, but especially Gaara.

He tries to keep everything in his mind, and this time it feels easier, because he can’t forget his glee when he got the clones right finally. He’s going to write it all down. Everything he can remember - just like Shikamaru said. But first, he needs to write the note. He doesn’t know when he’s going to fall asleep next or if he’ll forget soon, but he needs Gaara to wake up and see the note.

 _We passed the Academy exam!_ He writes happily on a piece of paper in huge characters and sticks it into the frame of his mirror where Gaara will surely see it. No one else ever visits anyways, and Naruto thinks they might switch again tonight when he finally falls asleep, and he _really_ doesn’t want to forget.

He grins at his handiwork, and his eye catches on the reflection of his headband in the mirror. It’s all real! He’s really a genin now! He looks around the room, thinking that there was something else he meant to do, but all he can think now is that he needs to show Teuchi and Ayame his headband. So, he says goodbye to his apartment and heads to Ichiraku to meet Iruka. Today has been the best day _ever_.

\---

The ANBU assigned to monitoring Naruto today slides the window open of Naruto’s apartment, sinking into the room like a shadow. The apartment is noticeably cleaner than the last time he was on this particular duty, he notes, although there’s an empty ramen cup sitting in the middle of a table and a few scrolls laying around, but nothing too unusual for an Academy student living on his own. 

He’s been instructed to leave Naruto’s weekly stipend in an obvious location, so he gingerly picks up the styrofoam ramen cup and tosses it into the trash, setting the dirty chopsticks next to the sink. He lays a thin envelope down on the table. He tries not to think of the implications of this whole set-up, but he frowns anyways, and the thoughts creep past his defenses.

He looks around Naruto’s small space a bit more, wondering why the Hokage continues to allow the child to live like this, but shakes his head. The order is strict. The Nine-Tails is not discussed, and they are not to interact with Naruto in anyway. He’s ready to slip out of the apartment as silently as he arrived, when something catches his eye. Messy characters scrawled on a piece of paper stuck into the mirror frame. He reads the note - _We passed the Academy exam!_ \- and it strikes him as unusual to say the least. Who is the note from? Or did Naruto write it to himself?

He looks around the room but sees little else of interest. He shrugs to himself. _I’ll let senpai know_ , he thinks, because it’s probably something Kakashi would want to know about. Kakashi’s no longer in ANBU but he still keeps track of Naruto when he can. And he’s going to be his jounin-sensei after all. Although no obvious expression crosses his face, Tenzou feels glee at the prospect of three genin tormenting Kakashi. He tamps the emotion down. Now’s not the time for that.

He’s sure Kakashi will have already heard what happened during the Academy exam. Tenzou nearly revealed himself at that moment - worried that Naruto was managing to break the seal that holds the Nine-Tails powers in check. But Tenzou will make sure to let him know about that as well, just in case. To see the shroud - and the beginning of a tail forming. Tenzou knows that he could’ve stopped it, but, it’s disturbing to say the least. They will have to keep a close eye on the new genin.

All looks well enough, so Tenzou departs and makes a beeline towards Ichiraku, where his target will be eating even _more_ ramen with one, Umino Iruka. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiii! Happy New Year! The next chapter will be up on January 30th. Thank you for reading!!


	8. Chapter 8

Naruto wakes up in his own bed, confused. He somehow didn’t expect to be here, he thinks vaguely, blinking up at the ceiling. He sits up slowly, remembering the events of yesterday. He’s a genin now! He’s going to get a genin team today! He jumps out of bed, excited to find his headband, and stops abruptly when he sees the message on the mirror. A note in his own handwriting. A note for...

Gaara! That’s right! Gaara should’ve swapped with him, he thinks. He feels torn between disappointment and relief. He’s _really_ looking forward to his first day of being a genin and meeting his teammates and his jounin-sensei, but he also wants to thank Gaara. They did it! They passed the Academy exam! He feels, somehow, that he probably couldn’t’ve have done it if not for Gaara’s help. Or at least the help of Gaara’s siblings.

He leaves the message on the mirror for Gaara to see, whenever Gaara returns, because Naruto’s _sure_ Gaara will return. Gaara just doesn’t sleep as often as Naruto does, and it’s hard to tell what causes the swapping anyways.

Naruto carefully puts his headband on, tying it tightly around his head and adjusting the Konoha leaf so it’s straight on his forehead. It feels slightly heavy there, but in a good way. He grins at himself in the mirror. Today seems full of promise. Maybe he’ll even get to be on a team with Sakura! Or at the very least, he doesn’t want to be put on a team with Sasuke. He tries not to let that thought sour his mood.

He’s planning on making ramen for breakfast when he notices the envelope laying on his table. He doesn’t remember seeing that before, he thinks. Did the Old Man stop by? The envelope contains some money - the usual amount - and he pulls out his frog wallet and carefully places the bills inside. It makes him think about Shikamaru’s comment the other day - something about the village keeping an eye on him, and he frowns. 

He looks around his apartment. He’s never had to pay for it, he thinks, but maybe it belonged to his parents. He lived at the orphanage for a long time, until the Old Man got him and brought him here. There was barely any furniture here when he arrived - no sign of any previous occupants. He doesn’t know who his parents were, but he doesn’t _really_ think they ever lived here. It feels wrong somehow. And he never really thought about why the Old Man gives him money sometimes, but it makes more sense now the longer he thinks about it.

  
The demon. That’s got to be it, he thinks. He feels a creeping sensation along his skin, and presses a hand against the seal on his stomach. He really does have something sealed inside him, doesn’t he? Some terrible fox demon that nearly destroyed the village, and probably killed his parents. He doesn’t hear it like Gaara’s demon, but the thought of it… well, it’s enough to turn him off the ramen.

Instead, he decides to stop by one of the market stalls that doesn’t shoo him away to buy something this morning. The man at the stall gives him a stern look but accepts his money anyways, and Naruto waves goodbye to him, forcing himself to be cheerful. The looks of the villagers always hurt, but he thinks maybe he understands why they look at him the way they do. 

They must _know_. He wonders how they can tell. Did someone tell them? Why hasn’t he ever known? Was the Old Man was ever going to tell him at all? He frowns, trying to push the thoughts away. 

He will just have to work _even harder_ to become the Hokage. He races the rest of the way to the classroom, not wanting to be late.

\---

Shikamaru immediately stands up to greet Naruto when he gets to the usual classroom, but looks surprised.

“Ah, I just thought - “ Shikamaru says, and then shakes his head. “Oh nevermind.” 

Naruto nearly asks Shikamaru what he means, but then Iruka-sensei calls the class to attention, and he scrambles to his chair.

“Today will be your last day in the Academy building,” Iruka begins, and Naruto’s excitement levels rise to a nearly unbearable level. He feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his seat. He’s going to find out his team!

“I’ll announce the teams, and then your jounin-sensei will be by to pick each team up and introduce themselves. Your jounin-sensei will determine your training schedules, and you will be meeting with them from here on out,” Iruka continues. He looks a little sad, but he’s smiling at the same time.

“I’m really glad to have been able to teach all of you,” he says. “Please stop by and say hello at any time. I’m very proud of all of you.”

Naruto bounces a little in his seat, getting an annoyed look from Sakura, but he doesn’t even care. He secretly hopes she’ll be on his team. He can _totally_ win her over if they’re on a team together.

Iruka starts listing out the teams, three genin each. When he finally gets to Naruto’s team, Naruto’s torn between excitement and disappointment. He stares between Sakura and Sasuke. They are all on a team together. Him and Sakura and _Sasuke_. He wants to jump out of his chair and yell at Iruka-sensei for such a terrible decision, but he holds himself back. He’s a genin now. He _passed_ the Academy exam. He has to make this work! Even if it’s with Sasuke of all people.

Hinata’s team is announced next. And another team later - Ino-Shika-Chou, of course. Ino tosses her hair at Sakura, and makes a face at her, while Sakura gives Ino a smug look. Ino gives her own teammates a long-suffering glance, but even Naruto knew that she would be teamed up with Shikamaru and Chouji. It’s how it’s always been.

Sasuke gives Naruto a begrudging nod when they finally make eye contact, and Naruto looks away quickly, feeling surprised. Usually Sasuke calls him an idiot if he acknowledges him at all. Sakura seems to be taking the approach of ignoring him entirely in favor of making gloating faces at Ino. Ino pouts back.

Iruka-sensei clears his throat, after he finishes the final team announcements. “Your jounin-sensei will be by shortly to meet you,” he says. “Please wait here until they arrive.” And with that, he gives them a final nod and leaves the room. Naruto feels kind of sad about leaving Academy, but excited at the same time. He hopes they get a good jounin!

The idea that they might get a “good” jounin slowly wears off the longer Naruto and the rest of his team sits waiting. He’s getting more and more bored as all of the other teams, one after another, are picked up by their jounin-sensei until only his and Shikamaru’s teams are left. Sakura and Ino have given up on trading insults, which they started immediately after Iruka-sensei left the room. They are now ignoring each other while Chouji reads manga and Shikamaru naps. 

The door slides open, and the next jounin that arrives says, “Team 10?” Shikamaru perks up, Chouji stops reading his manga, and Ino stops pretending to ignore Sakura. They all make their way to the door, and Shikamaru gives Naruto a sympathetic wave goodbye.

The other jounin looks back at them before leaving, looking around the classroom as if surprised not to see any other students. “Team 7?” he asks, and Sakura nods. Naruto wonders if he knows anything about their jounin-sensei, but instead, the jounin just says, “Good luck, kids. You’re going to need it,” and leaves them with a sense of foreboding.

“What does that mean??” Sakura whispers frantically, after he’s left, and Naruto shrugs.

“Dunno, maybe our sensei’s going to be really mean,” he suggests, but he really hopes not. Sasuke says nothing, but Sasuke doesn’t really ever talk much anyways.

They wait nearly an hour longer until Naruto jumps out of his seat, unable to stand it anymore. He darts to the classroom door, peering down the hall, but sees no one there.

“Naruto, what are you doing?” Sakura hisses at him, and he shrugs. 

“Dunno!” he says, sliding the door closed again behind him. He has half a thought about pulling a prank. He’s held himself back _all day_. He scans the classroom, looking for possibilities. It feels like such a long time since he’s done one, and this jounin really has it coming to him.

“Why’s our sensei the only one that’s late?” he half-asks, half-complains, and Sakura looks a little uncertain. Sasuke rolls his eyes and continues to say nothing.

“Everyone else is gone already!” Naruto says again, and Sakura just shakes her head. 

“Maybe our sensei _is_ really terrible,” she says, finally.

Sasuke sighs at both of them, and then speaks up for the first time. “He’s a jounin,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. Sakura blushes a little and looks away, and Naruto just glares at him. Stupid Sasuke. 

Naruto’s still a little bitter about that sparring match that Gaara had with Sasuke. If only Naruto had been there for that! Naruto feels a little shock run through him at remembering something about Gaara. His head feels a little fuzzy suddenly, and he steps away from the door. 

Come to think of it, he probably hasn’t pulled a prank since he started switching with Gaara. He feels different somehow. He’s been spending more time with Shikamaru when he’s in this body, and when he’s not… well, he doesn’t exactly remember at the moment. But somehow pranks have been less interesting lately.

He finally spots an eraser and an idea hits him. _Perfect_ , he thinks, filling with glee. He grabs the eraser, and Sakura gives him a curious look. He’s just about to grab a step stool as well to complete the prank, when the door slides open. Naruto stumbles back, and a shock of grey hair pokes through the doorway. Naruto blinks at the familiar-looking jounin, and the other man blinks back, his eyes oddly blank.

“Team 7?” he asks, and Naruto just nods, staring up at the man. He’s pretty sure he’s seen the guy before, but he can’t pinpoint where. He quickly hides the eraser behind his back. Sakura mutters, “You’re late.”

The jounin makes an embarrassed gesture that doesn’t quite ring true, “Ah, I was held up,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. Naruto already dislikes him. The jounin reminds Naruto of Sasuke.

“Why don’t we go introduce ourselves,” the jounin continues, and Sasuke shrugs, “Whatever,” he says. 

Naruto scrambles over to the chalkboard to put the eraser back and then trails after his other teammates. Their jounin-sensei seems kind of lame for now, but he’s got to be good at something, he tries to remind himself. He hates to admit it, but Sasuke’s right. The guy _is_ a jounin, after all. And anyways, it doesn’t matter, because Naruto’s finally a genin! For real! No matter how bad his team is or how lame his jounin is, he _has_ to make this work. He’s going to be the Hokage, you better believe it!

\---

The introductions don’t go very well at all. 

In fact, Naruto can barely remember what Sakura _or_ Sasuke said other than Sasuke’s weird declaration that he wants to kill someone. Naruto just hopes Sasuke’s not talking about _him_. But, regardless, after their introductions, Kakashi-sensei announced _another_ exam. And this one Naruto doesn’t have time to prepare for _at all_. 

Naruto tries to see if Sakura and Sasuke want to stay later after Academy and train together, but they are totally uninterested. Sakura says something about Ino, and Sasuke just shrugs, waving them both off. 

He needs to train, Naruto thinks frantically, and it’s an unusual feeling for him. But then he thinks about how it felt in the Academy exam room, when he _actually made the clone_ and how proud Iruka-sensei was of him. He can’t mess this up now! And then he thinks - Gaara. He needs to write a note for Gaara. If Naruto goes to sleep tonight, Gaara could wake up in the morning and not know where to go for the test. And then they would fail anyways. 

He rushes back to his apartment and writes another note, sticking it right below the first one on the mirror. 

“IMPORTANT! Meet the team at the memorial stone,” it says in much more cramped characters.

He stares at it and wishes briefly that he could just stay awake all night to make sure they don’t swap again. But there’s no way… If he’s too tired tomorrow… Kakashi-sensei made it sound like the test would be the most difficult thing they’ve done yet. He could try sleeping now, but there’s too much left of the day and he’s remembering stuff. He remembers training in Gaara’s body, like something out of a dream. Glimpses in the corners of his memory. He needs to try to make the clones again, at the very least. He _has_ to be able to do it again. 

He wonders if Shikamaru would help him. He takes a quick glance in the mirror to make sure his headband is on straight before heading out again to find Shikamaru’s team.

\---

Ino and the jounin are both already gone by the time Naruto finds Shikamaru’s team in a training ground close to the Academy building. Shikamaru’s laying in the grass, staring at the sky, and Chouji’s sitting with his back against a tree stump, one hand in a bag of chips, the other holding up manga. He nods to Naruto when Naruto arrives, and Shikamaru turns his head for a moment but doesn’t sit up.

“Your team’s already done for the day, too?” Shikamaru asks, and Naruto nods, but Shikamaru’s already looking at the clouds again and probably can’t see him. He stands over Shikamaru, blocking his view of the sky.

“Let’s train,” Naruto says, and Chouji looks up from his manga again, surprised.

Shikamaru’s mouth tugs down into a frown. “No way,” he says. “You sound just like Ino.”

Naruto doesn’t budge. He doesn’t know how much he should say about Gaara in front of Chouji. Does Chouji even know? Naruto hasn’t asked him, and he feels a little guilty about that.

“Come on,” Naruto nearly whines. “We have another test tomorrow,” he explains.

Shikamaru’s eyes sharpen at that. “ _Another_ test?” 

Naruto nods, “Yeah, our jounin-sensei said we have our _real_ test tomorrow, whatever that means.”

Chouji shrugs, “Asuma-sensei didn’t mention that,” he says, and Shikamaru shakes his head in agreement, finally sitting up.

“No, he definitely didn’t,” Shikamaru agrees, and Naruto can see the wheels turning in Shikamaru’s mind. 

“Naruto,” Shikamaru says carefully. “ _You_ don’t need to train, really, do you?”

And Naruto _knows_ that. Gaara will probably be the one to take the test tomorrow. He doesn’t say it outloud. “I don’t know,” he answers, instead. And he really doesn’t. He thinks they’ll probably switch tomorrow but he can never know for sure. Something deep within him feels a little sad thinking that one day they may never switch again, and he might forget about all of this. Just another dream. He feels his face wobble at that, and tries to smile.

“I just want to,” he says. “I want to see if I can still do it.”

Chouji shakes his head. “Count me out,” he says, and Naruto nods, waiting for Shikamaru to say the same. Shikamaru rolls his eyes instead though.

“I guess that leaves me, then, doesn’t it?” Shikamaru says finally, and stands up, brushing himself off.

Naruto feels himself grin for real now. He doesn’t know if he’ll be the one taking the test tomorrow, but he’s going to do everything he can, just in case. 

Shikamaru gives him a friendly shove. “Just don’t let Ino hear about this,” he grumbles in passing, and Naruto nods emphatically as they start katas. 

This is all he can do for now, he thinks. He just hopes that it will be enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Next chapter will be up on February 27th!~~
> 
> Update (2/27): Ahh ;_____; Real Life is getting in the way of updates. I'm taking a small hiatus to try to get caught up, so Chapter 9 will be up on 3/27 instead. Thanks for reading! <3


	9. Chapter 9

As soon as Gaara’s eyes open, he knows he’s in Konoha. He immediately remembers the Academy exam, a sick feeling running through him. He closes his eyes again, squeezing them shut. _What happened?_

His time in Suna - after he got pulled back from the Academy exam by _something_ \- he found himself feeling more exhausted than he ever had before. Apparently Naruto had been training in his already too-tired body before they swapped again. Reckless. Gaara feels himself nearly smiling at the thought, though. He’s never _met_ Naruto, but he feels like he knows him all the same. Especially from the way Kankurou addressed him when Kankurou thought he was Naruto. So informal. So unlike how Kankurou usually addresses Gaara. What _is_ it about Naruto?

Gaara forces himself to sit up. He has to face whatever happened here, regardless of how bad it turned out. Part of him is surprised they switched at all after the last time. It felt like something broke. Like the connection backfired in some way. Like maybe it could’ve been unrepairable. He’s definitely back in Konoha now, though, and he doesn’t think it’s been that long. Maybe a day or two?

He looks around Naruto’s little room. Some pieces of paper tucked into the mirror frame catch his attention immediately, and he pushes himself to get out of bed to look at them. He recognizes Naruto’s messy handwriting - the characters are barely readable. 

_We passed the Academy exam!_ one says.  

...passed?

_Meet the team at the memorial stone!_ the other says, even less helpfully. Gaara frowns. What is the memorial stone? And _team_? Conflicting feelings swirl within him as he wraps his mind around it.

_We passed...?_

Gaara closes his eyes again, briefly, trying to imagine the exam, but it’s hard to remember what happened. Did he succeed in using Naruto’s chakra _before_ they swapped? Or did Naruto do it himself after? It had to be the latter, he thinks. 

But he feels… hopeful. He lets the feeling radiate through him.

“Meet the team at the memorial stone,” he re-reads the last part aloud, curiously. He assumes Naruto means the genin team that he was assigned to, if they did pass the exam, but Gaara’s not sure what the memorial stone even _is_. He doesn’t recall it ever being mentioned before, he thinks, frowning. Also, _when_ is he supposed to meet the team?

****

Gaara feels frustrated that Naruto left him with such little information, but on the other hand Naruto did try to leave notes.

_It can’t be helped_ , he thinks, feeling oddly cheerful. He decides that he will try to find Shikamaru in hopes that _he_ has some idea of where Naruto is supposed to be this morning.

Gaara doesn’t see anything in the cabinets other than ramen, so he decides not to eat anything after all, even though this body is definitely hungry. He just doesn’t think he can stomach instant ramen first thing in the morning. 

He knows where Shikamaru lives, so he tries going there first, but Shikamaru’s mother greets him at the door alone.

“He’s already left for training,” she says, shaking her head. If she’s surprised to see Naruto here, she doesn’t say anything, and for that, Gaara is increasingly thankful. Instead, she offers him breakfast.

“I sent a bento with Shikamaru, but I have some onigiri leftover,” she says, and Gaara thanks her politely, bowing even as she opens the refrigerator. She laughs. “Of course, Naruto,” she says, and Gaara still finds it strange to hear other people address him by that name. 

“You better get going, though,” she adds when she’s finished, and she hands him a familiar bento box. “You’ll be late.”

And that’s part of the trouble, but Gaara can’t very well ask her where the Memorial Stone is either. 

“Where is Shikamaru’s team training today?” he asks, cautiously, and she does give him an odd look at that but gives him the training ground number. 

Unfortunately, it’s not one Gaara recognizes. He is, once again, confounded by his lack of knowledge of Konoha’s geography.

At the very least, he heads in the general direction she indicated when mentioning the training ground, trying to recall the places he has visited before with Shikamaru or the Academy class. He marvels at how tranquil Konoha feels as he walks, even with the occasional glare from a passing villager. There’s something soft and soothing about all of the green and the pleasant sort of seasonal weather here. Suna feels harsh in comparison, although it can be beautiful in its own right, he thinks. Gaara can’t help but feel at _home_ in the sand in a way that he could never feel at home here, among the moist earth. Naruto’s body doesn’t have the ability to use sand here, but he wonders how difficult it would be to pull sand from this soil. He thinks it would probably take much more effort, and he wishes, briefly, that he could be here in his own body. That he could meet Shikamaru in person. Meet Naruto. See Konoha through his _own_ eyes.

He eventually does make it to a group of training grounds, conveniently numbered with sign posts. He sees a few other teams in his passing and eventually spots Shikamaru’s team, much to the rest of the team’s confusion.

The blonde who’s always fighting with Sakura scowls at him. “Naruto! What are you doing here?” she asks. Ino, he thinks, is her name. Chouji raises a hand in greeting, and the jounin training with the team stops short.

“Uzumaki Naruto?” he asks, confusion crossing his face. “You’re supposed to be with Hatake today, aren’t you?”

“Ah,” Shikamaru says, perhaps reading the panic in Gaara’s eyes. He seems to recognize Gaara instantly. “I’ll be just a minute, Asuma-sensei,” he says, hurrying over to Gaara’s side.

“You’re back!” Shikamaru says, obviously glad to see him, but Gaara interrupts him. 

“Where’s the memorial stone?” he asks frantically. Shikamaru laughs, “Of course, Naruto didn’t leave directions did he?”

Gaara shakes his head, feeling relieved as Shikamaru points the way. “You’ll be okay,” Shikamaru says, and Gaara hopes it’s true. 

“Good luck,” Shikamaru adds, and Shikamaru’s teammates give him curious glances as Gaara leaves, but it can’t be helped. 

By the time he finds the memorial stone, his own two teammates are already there, but thankfully the jounin-sensei is not. He can’t be _that_ late, he thinks. He is, however, surprised to find that his teammates are none other than Sasuke and Sakura. He eyes them both warily, unsure of how to interact with them. He still has no idea how to pretend to be Naruto, and now Shikamaru isn’t here as a buffer.

“Naruto?” Sakura asks in a not-so-casual tone, “What is that in your hand?”

Gaara holds up the bag containing the onigiri from Shikamaru’s mother, half-forgotten amid his travel. “Food,” he replies. He’s grateful she reminded him, and he begins unwrapping the bento. 

She watches, rapt, and he finds it odd that she would ask him such an obvious question. He sees that neither she nor Sasuke brought anything of their own, though. If they are training all day today, they are both going to be quite hungry…

“Do you want one?” he asks, but Sakura frowns at him, shaking her head. 

“Kakashi-sensei told us not to eat anything,” she says.

“Oh,” Gaara replies, feeling mildly embarrassed, but there’s no way to cover up the error now. And, besides, why would the jounin ask them to do that? 

“He’s not even here yet,” he counters. Sakura looks hungry but unconvinced. She turns her head away with a sniff.

“I’m dieting anyways,” she says, and Gaara can’t understand the logic behind that either. Why would a kunoichi need to diet? He’s totally mystified. Surely Temari never does such a thing. He’s beginning to think Konoha is a very strange place.

He glances at Sasuke who has been watching the conversation in silence. “Are you dieting as well?” he asks, holding out the bento, and Sasuke snorts and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and he takes a rice ball. “You didn’t make this yourself, did you?” he asks skeptically, and Gaara shakes his head in return.

“Shikamaru’s mother did,” he answers, and Sasuke seems to accept that as a reasonable reply.

“Pretty good,” Sasuke admits, and Gaara agrees as he bites into one of his own.

Sakura keeps giving them furtive glances, but doesn’t budge. When they are down to the last onigiri, so Gaara holds it out to her, silently.

She glares at him at first, but when he persists, she accepts it, frowning. “I guess one wouldn’t hurt,” she says, and she eats it immediately. Gaara regrets not saving her another one.

“Where’s our stupid sensei anyways?” she says, finally, and Gaara realizes they’ve been there for a while now. Sasuke makes a vague noise that sounds like he disapproves as well, and Gaara doesn’t even know what their sensei looks like, so he’s not sure how he could possibly reply. 

Sakura finally breaks the silence again, after several more moments. “Did you really fill the entire room with clones?” she asks, giving him an odd look, and Gaara has no idea what she’s talking about. 

“During the Academy exam?” he guesses, and she nods, eyes wide. Is that what happened with Naruto’s exam, then? He can’t confirm or deny it, since he has no memory of the thing, so he shrugs.  


Sasuke snorts at him again, and Sakura peers at him closely. “What’s wrong with you today anyways?” she asks.  


This gives Gaara a bit of a shock, and he feels his face heating. “Maybe I’m coming down with something,” he mumbles, and she tilts her head at him.

“You do seem kind of - off,” she agrees. “You’ve been really weird sometimes lately though.”

And she would know, of course, because she used to sit right next to him in Academy, and Gaara really still has no idea how Naruto would usually act. He shrugs again, uncomfortable with this train of conversation. 

Luckily the jounin sensei shows up, appearing before them in a swirl of leaves.

“Yo,” he says, lifting a hand in greeting. He pauses, eyes landing on the open bento next to where they are all sitting.

“What is that?” he asks carefully.

“Onigiri!” Sakura says happily. “Sorry Kakashi-sensei, we didn’t save you one. But since you were _so_ late -” she places a lot of emphasis on the fact of his lateness, and Gaara has to agree. The jounin - Kakashi-sensei, apparently - was _incredibly_ late. And Gaara doesn’t even know how long Sakura and Sasuke had been waiting there before he got there. 

Kakashi glares at them. “I definitely told you all not to eat anything,” he says pointedly.

“I brought them,” Gaara admits, cutting in. He feels bad for already ruining this part of the training exercise for Naruto, but there’s no way he could have known. The whole thing didn’t make any sense anyways.

“And you _shared_ them?” Kakashi asks dubiously. 

Gaara nods, and Kakashi shakes his head, sighing, “Maa, well I guess it can’t be helped.”

Sakura looks as if she is about to burst out laughing. “Sensei, were you trying to play a trick on us?” she asks, too politely, and Kakashi looks vaguely embarrassed. He clears his throat, ignoring her question entirely.

“We will now begin your real Academy exam,” he says, but some of the effect is lost since Sakura is still repressing a smile at him, and even Sasuke looks amused. Gaara’s glad his teammates don’t seem to mind too much that he broke one of the first orders their jounin-sensei had given them. 

“I have two bells,” Kakashi says, holding out a fist. This captures all of their attention, and Gaara watches carefully, waiting for the instructions. This is the moment. Gaara will _not_ fail this time. 

Kakashi opens his hand, and the bells dangle innocently from thin strings. “To pass the test,” Kakashi continues, “You must take a bell from me. The person who doesn’t get a bell will be sent back to Academy.”

There’s a beat of silence, where the last warning hangs in the air ominously, but then -

“That’s illogical,” Gaara points out, before he can stop himself. “You need three genin for your squad, so if one of us doesn’t get a bell, then you won’t have a genin team to teach.”

“Seriously?” Kakashi asks, throwing his hands up, and the bells jingle together cheerfully with the movement. “Are you really Uzumaki Naruto?” he asks, glaring at Gaara. “I thought you were supposed to be the class clown.”

Gaara’s face heats up again. He can’t help it today, it seems. He’s yet again done something so completely out of character for Naruto that someone’s questioning him. Sakura and Sasuke both look at him like they’ve never seen him before, but then Sasuke speaks up.

“He’s right you know,” Sasuke says quietly, nodding to himself. “This exam doesn’t make sense at all.”

Kakashi stares at all of them as if he’d like to knock their heads together, and finally just says, “Well that’s the test. Figure out how to get the bells, or fail.”

Sakura looks a little worried, but Sasuke looks like he’s still thinking through the problem at hand. Gaara’s determined not to say anything else that could be incriminating.

“This test is impossible,” Sasuke concludes, crossing his arms and glaring back at Kakashi. “I don’t think we should do it at all.”

Sakura looks at him with surprise, and Kakashi just looks even more exasperated than before. 

“If Sasuke doesn’t think so…” Sakura hedges, looking to Gaara for confirmation, and Gaara shrugs. He’ll do whatever the rest of the team wants to do at this point, although he’s not sure how he will hide his inability to use Naruto’s chakra if it comes down to actually trying to get the bells.

“You’re all a bunch of brats, you know,” Kakashi says in a threatening voice, but eventually sighs. “Alright, alright, you pass.”

Gaara looks at the jounin in shock. “Pass?” he asks, unsure if he heard that right.

Kakashi nods, but he doesn’t look happy about it. “It’s a teamwork test,” he admits. “Most genin will just try to prove that they are the best and go for the bells, disregarding the rest of their team.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up at the clouds, as if remembering something.

“Surprisingly, you are all willing to work together as a team already,” he shrugs. “That’s the test.”

“So it _was_ a trick all along?” Sakura confirms, and Kakashi nods. 

“So it would seem,” he says, giving them all a fake smile that they can only see from his eyes above the mask. It’s not very convincing.

“But now we have nothing to do all afternoon, and I do have these two bentos I made especially for the purpose of the test,” he continues, sounding put out about it.

“There’s no way you actually made those bentos, sensei,” Sakura points out, and Gaara could swear that Kakashi’s cheeks are turning red under the mask.

“Brats,” he repeats. “All of you.”

“I still want to try to get a bell,” Sasuke mutters, and Kakashi seems to perk up at that.

“Oh?” Kakashi goads, “You think you can get one from me, Uchiha?”

Sasuke nods once and immediately drops into a sparring stance. 

Kakashi eyes light up above the mask. “You’re welcome to try, brat.”

Sakura rolls her eyes. “Let’s work together to get one,” she suggests, but Sasuke ignores her. 

Kakashi brings out a scandalous-looking book with a bright orange cover. “I bet you can’t get a bell, even if I’m reading the entire time,” he says, also ignoring Sakura’s suggestion.

Sakura sighs, “I guess we’re on our own then.”

Gaara shrugs. He’s curious about the matchup, anyways. He wants to see how good Sasuke is exactly, and he doesn’t want to show his poor grasp on Naruto’s chakra.

Sakura sits on the memorial stone and opens one of the bentos Kakashi left behind, gesturing to him to join her. Gaara sits down next to her and peers inside the bento. He’s not sure _who_ made these for Kakashi, exactly, but it looks nice all the same. Perhaps not as nice as Shikamaru’s mother’s bentos, though, he thinks, loyally.

“You’re really not Naruto, are you?” Sakura asks him, point-blank, after a few moments of eating in silence, and he looks up at her in shock. She’s not looking directly at him. She’s still staring at Sasuke trying to get a bell from Kakashi, so she can’t possibly see him when he shakes his head ‘no’ but she, of course, knows the answer already.

“I’ve wondered for a while,” she says. “I sat directly next to Naruto for way too long not to notice.”

“And you and Shikamaru aren’t _that_ subtle about it,” she adds, making Gaara smile. He says nothing in reply to her, still watching Sasuke and Kakashi fight. The Uchiha’s style and level of talent is good for a genin - for someone who hasn’t been trained his whole life as a weapon. 

“Who are you?” Sakura asks finally, when Gaara remains quiet.

“Gaara,” he says. “My name is Gaara.”

Sakura turns to him and smiles, something completely genuine. “It’s nice to meet you, Gaara,” she says. He nods back at her, unsure of how to proceed.

“Does Naruto -” she hesitates. “I mean, I know Naruto is here _sometimes_.”

Gaara shakes his head. “We don’t understand what’s happening,” he admits. “But Naruto is usually here, and sometimes he’s not…”

She nods, accepting the explanation. “It must be difficult,” she says, and he agrees but doesn’t reply.

“So you weren’t there for the clones then?” she asks suddenly, and Gaara shakes his head. 

“Not exactly,” he says. “We swapped right in the middle of the test, actually. The clones, or whatever happened - that was all Naruto.”

She looks surprised at that, but asks curiously, “How did you swap?”

Gaara shrugs again, “I don’t know. We can’t work it out. It usually happens when we fall asleep.”

She makes a humming noise at that. 

“Welcome to the team, I suppose,” she says. “I think I prefer you to Naruto, to be honest,” she admits, and Gaara laughs at that. The sensation still feels completely unfamiliar - laughing - but the longer he spends time in Konoha, the more he thinks he’s getting used to it. 

“I don’t even know the first thing about acting like Naruto,” he admits to her, and she smiles at him. 

“That’s probably for the best,” she says. “You’re much more tolerable this way,” she adds, blushing a bit, and looking away, and he ignores that, letting the conversation fall into silence again. 

She hops up a little while later, the bento long gone and the battle between the other two still continuing in the distance. “Well, we can’t let Kakashi and Sasuke have all of the fun,” she says, and he blinks up at her in surprise. 

“Do you want to spar?” she asks, and he nods cautiously. He’s never actually sparred with Sakura before, although he’s seen one of her matches the first day he switched with Naruto. It’s hard to recall what her style was like, and so he’s curious to see how she does. 

He stands up, setting his reservations aside. “Alright,” he agrees. “Let’s spar.”

She nods to him, coming straight for him, and he finds himself surprised and pleased. In his own body, back in Suna, no one would dare fight him in this manner, because of the sand defense. Being in Konoha, in Naruto’s body, is so completely refreshing sometimes, even if he has yet to figure out how to work Naruto’s chakra. He’s belatedly glad they didn’t have to take Kakashi’s bell test seriously after all. Naruto won’t be too disappointed to have missed it, he thinks, and this is more fun anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Gaara and Naruto swap bodies and they are _really bad at it_.
> 
> ~~Next chapter up on April 10th if all goes well.~~ Thanks for reading!!  <3
> 
> **Update (4/10):** Hi everyone! Here with an update. I _nearly_ have Chapter 10 finished, but it's not quite ready to post. Instead of pushing the date back again, I'm going to move Dreams of Leaves and Sand to an ad-hoc posting schedule. All this really means is that I can't give an exact date when the next chapter will go up, but I am 100% actively working on this fic (and have it outlined all the way to the end).
> 
> For some context, I've been dealing with a stressful job situation for quite a while now, and I'm really pleased to announce that I'm going to be starting a new job soon. So this is going to help in a lot of ways, but what it also means is that there will probably be a temporary increase of chaos in my life. XD Hopefully I'll have everything ironed out over the next few months. Thank you so much to everyone who is reading along!


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